This Is Better
by Cheecho
Summary: She's bit selfish; he's a little hardened.
1. Intro  A Brief Reprieve

A/N

Not mine, clearly.

I would really love any feedback anyone has. I have tough skin and anything that's even remotely constructive would be most welcome.

The story takes place during the events of Origins, but I promise not to simply re-tell the story, only worse. I write some moments that I've imagined, embellish what needs embellishing, and try to tell another aspect of the Dalish story. I try to strike a balance between character and plot. The M rating starts in chapter two. Around chapter six, it gets slightly AUy. (Yes, that's a word.) I have ten chapters now and plans for at least a few more. We'll see after that.

As we begin, the party has completed "The Arl of Redcliffe" and "Broken Circle."

Thanks for spending some of your time with me today.

**This is Better: A Brief Reprieve**

* * *

Loren gasped into the black of her tent, the unease of her dream still holding her tight. The man in her dream had been undeniably Tamlen; his hair falling around her face, soft on the skin of her shaved head. Her fingers had traced the tattoos of his god, Grace, and his bow-calloused fingers traced Strength on her high forehead. The sex had been indistinct – the ache of longing rather than actual stimulation. Loren had been with men, but not Tamlen. They had had the ability to spend days together in silence. Not the terse silence of Sten's tightly suppressed disapproval, but the reserve of two people who didn't want to complicate a very satisfying working relationship. Loren could tell which weapon Tamlen had been holding, or if his ankle was hurting him, just by the sound of his step, but she could never have said what was he was thinking about after they'd broke camp for the day. She had liked it that way.

She laid back down on the thin human bedroll they'd picked up months ago, in Lothering. It wasn't warm enough, and the combination of chill and disquiet made her restless. Loren pulled the fabric of the tent's opening to the side. It was almost her watch anyways, and she could hear Leliana humming by the fire to keep herself awake.

"It is like with Cabel, yes?" Leliana said, happily petting the mabari's broad head, after Loren had tried to describe her unease. "He is always connected to you, but what does he think?" Leliana turned the dog's face towards her own. "We will never know." The dog licked her enthusiastically in the mouth, and Leliana spluttered and pushed him away.

"Elves aren't dogs," Loren said, for the second time, lifting a corner of her mouth to take the sting out of her correction. Leliana wasn't a bad human; in fact, Loren had found herself liking the bard very much. Maybe it was because Leliana had been so happy to do most of the talking when they'd first met. "Dreaming of Tamlen that way felt wrong. Like dreaming of your father."

"You miss your people, of course," Leliana explained. "This is the reason for your dream, and nothing more."

Loren said nothing, pushing a stick further into the bonfire. Earlier in the week, she had decided they were going to skip past the Brecilian Forest, despite how closely they would be passing to it. "If Genetivi's in danger – and I am sure he is – we have no time to waste," she'd said to Alistair, who'd nodded curtly and walked away without comment. He was still smarting over Isolde, obviously.

But honestly, who was Loren to have understood that Alistair would have been so upset by the death of the woman who should have loved him like family, but had denied him space even in the stables? No one but Jowan had volunteered a solution, including Alistair, who'd been standing right there. Did he really think that she, an elf with no experience of humans or human magic, was supposed to divine that the Circle could have performed the same spell? The woman had volunteered to die for her son and for her appalling lack of judgement, which did not seem like an unreasonable arrangement. Alistair, who she was supposed to be able to count on, had hardly explained what was so unpalatable about blood magic. He was an open, if incomplete, book on the subject of Grey Wardens, but bizarrely opaque about apostates, blood mages and templars. The terms signified nothing to Loren; she didn't even know how to ask for details. It'd be like him asking about aravels and her starting with how to steer them. Thank gods for Leliana, who'd stepped in to explain.

"We will stop by the forest after we find the ashes, no? You will see that your dream will stop then."

Loren did not miss her people. Almost immediately after her decision to bypass the forest, she'd agreed to Morrigan's request. She missed living with the Clan, sometimes: the Halla, and hunting with Tamlen, and the thick pastes of Dalish food. She definitely missed not having to have all her armour adjusted so drastically, or the uncomfortable gaps and pressures that couldn't be hammered to her shape. She missed these comforts, but she did not miss her people. No one had ever treated her like Alistair's uncle and Isolde had treated him, like Marjolane had treated Leliana, or even like Flemeth had treated Morrigan. The cruelty of humans had shocked her. Nor was Loren's lack of parents unusual. There were other orphans in the Clan, as well as the children of unbonded parents. There were not so many elves left that anyone was thrown away – none of these ridiculous vows of chastity or ominous infertile orders. Her mother had given birth, then left. Loren was bigger than almost all the other women, bigger than many of the elven men. Her ears were smaller than everyone else's, despite her shaved head making them look longer than they were. The offspring of elves and humans were human, she knew, so she was her father's daughter, not the daughter of her mother's attackers. Still, her mother had left.

Ashalle had laughed off Loren's concerns when, at fourteen, she'd confessed. "You're elven, my love. Your mother had been broken by what happened to her, what happened to your father. She was worried, of course, when she realized she was pregnant after years of trying, after the attack. She was so happy when she saw you; she glowed, but I think that in the end, even you were not enough to replace your father, or to forget. She didn't abandon you. Elves are never abandoned. Stop looking for a way to be different. You belong here."

Loren had not stopped looking, and eventually she became as other as she'd felt herself to be. Her brain fogged. Had she done it to herself? She remembered the inner leaping when Duncan had made his suggestion. Leaving Denerim, she'd tried to imagine herself walking into the Dalish camp in her ill-fitting human armour. She needed new armour. Her Chasind Maul would be fine; Chasind were not Fereldan, not Tevinter. The only acceptable humans were outcasts, like the elves and like Duncan. Though, Duncan's infertility may have had something to do with his acceptability. He couldn't have bred them out if he'd wanted to. Loren wondered if her Keeper had known.

Leliana touched Loren's arm lightly. "I hope you are right," Loren said to the tired bard, who smiled, squeezed her arm, and bade Loren goodnight, leaving her to her watch and her thoughts. Loren watched her go. Why did she like Leliana so much? Was it because it was so unlikely? She got along with Alistair, her fellow Grey Warden, but even before Isolde, there hadn't been the same easiness between them that there was between her and Leliana. She should have gotten along with the other elf, Zevran, but his lewdness and enthusiastic sexuality grated on her. Were all city elves like him? Dalish treated the whole subject with a bit more respect, even if they didn't have the strict monogamy of humans. Or, Loren thought, the strict monogamy that they pretended to practice.

Leliana, though. What would an almost-bald Dalish warrior have in common with an Orlesian bard, where slavery was still legal and birds were included in hairstyles? It wasn't sexual – Loren had made that explicit when Leliana's lack of preference had become clear to her. It was just that there was no pressure; they had so little in common that Loren had nothing to lose by risking friendship. As soon as she thought this, she knew it was true, and the fog in her head cleared a little.

* * *

This was better; she couldn't hear the assassin's nattering from here. Loren stretched her now-bare toes over the mossy rock, greaves and boots lying a few feet away. Her eyes closed and her chin tilted upward. The leaves rustled like the river – fast and dark and not so far away – and Loren's arms pushed away from her body, slightly, unconsciously. She was aware of the branches streaking randomly over the sky's angry blue and the roots twisting malevolently between the rocks and under the moss. From far away, a bird twittered fast and loud. This was much better.

Behind her, from the direction of camp, a twig snapped. Loren didn't move, but she slid her eyelids up a fraction, measuring the exact distance to and angle of her maul, leaning against a nearby trunk. She could grab it and swing in the same motion, if she needed to. It would be a one-handed swing until the end of its arc, but it would still push away whoever it was. From the same direction, there was the screech of metal against rock and a man's voice called out, wordless and startled. Alistair was always running into trees; it was like he thought he was a little smaller than he was. His chainmail was tree scraped on almost every side, despite the fact that the road was wide enough for a cart. Loren's shoulders rose and her arms pressed closer to her ribs. Forest forgotten, she reached out for her boots and dragged them closer, sitting on a rock to strap them to her legs.

Alistair half-stumbled into Loren's small clearing. "Right, here you are. Sorry. I was just checking, um, wanting to let you know Zevran's got dinner ready," he said, flushing when he saw her leg splayed out, pushing up the skirt of mail. Loren kept her hands on her buckles; he kept his eyes on her throat. The man was like toffee, she thought: too sweet and too sticky.

"Has he stopped pestering Morrigan yet?"

"Ah, no. Not from my seat – it looked like no."

Loren ignored the double negative. "She looked ready to freeze him yesterday. I'm tempted to tell her that she can go ahead, really."

"It bothers you?"

"I don't like that one of our party is driving the other to murder, no." Alistair just raised an eyebrow at her, wisely choosing to not resurrect that particular argument. "And it's annoying," Loren added, surprising herself with blitheness. Loren was keenly aware of the fact that the addition of Zevran two days ago had already caused more conflict than any other party member, and just because he saw himself as Antivan rather than elven didn't mean that's what everyone else saw. Loren regretted letting him accompany them just on the basis of the amount of chatter that streamed steadily from his corner of camp. He made even Alistair and Leliana look reserved. None of the humans could hold their tongues, Loren reflected. Even Morrigan needled Alistair needlessly. Loren didn't really blame them; humans, even humans who had lived their lives in the Wilds, just didn't seem capable of silence. She thought, briefly, of Tamlen and her heart did a funny little squeeze, though she refused to let it show. Greaves attached, Loren stood and started back to camp.

"Loren?"

"Yes?" She slowed, but didn't stop, so Alistair had to rush to catch up. He walked behind her even when the path was wide enough for them both and it annoyed her. What would he have done if Duncan had chosen the mage Neria to accompany Alistair to the Tower and he'd been here with her? Forced her onto the front lines? Probably, she thought grimly. He caught her upper arm and let it go again, very quickly. Loren stopped and turned to face him.

"Look, I want to apologize." It came out very fast.

"For?"

"For what I said after Redcliffe. It hadn't really occurred to me that you wouldn't know that the Circle could have helped and you have every right to expect me to volunteer that kind of information." This sounded very rehearsed and Loren thought she heard the bard behind it.

Amused, Loren raised an eyebrow, "Did Leliana tell you to say that?"

Alistair blinked. "No. No, she . . . helped me understand why you made that choice. I was a bit lost in my own, well, in my own grief and I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry."

Gratitude and respect for both Alistair's honesty and Leliana's intercession flashed in Loren. "Apology accepted. I understand now about templars." Loren raised a hand, palm out towards him to signify the passing of the issue. The human just looked at her blankly, so she had to take his forearm in her hand and press his limp palm flat to hers. She thought, as she dropped both their arms, that the gesture had not relieved any tension. She turned back to camp and missed Alistair's expression of disappointment.


	2. Into the Flame

A/N: This was one of my favourite chapters to write.

Thanks for spending some of your day with me!

**This is Better: Into the Flame**

* * *

Loren, her hip pressed into a permanent welt, was the quickest to comply with the Guardian's request. Her scale gauntlets were off and her fingers at the buckles of her greaves before Alistair had even had time to look anxiously at his two female companions. Leliana was not far behind, a strange glow in her eyes, which she flicked between gauntlets and the fiery wall before them. Cabel stood a little before them, waiting. His tail was still, but Loren could see the tense anticipation in the muscles of his haunch. He looked just as he did when Sten paused, arm outstretched, before the stick started its long outward arc.

"Leliana," Loren raised her arm, letting the other woman's quick fingers undo the straps at her sides. The ulcer at her hip was pressed just briefly, as the strap as tightened to released the buckles' thin tongues, and Loren hissed slightly through her teeth. Then, relief. She did not bother preventing the armour's front half from hitting the ground. Hopefully, she thought, it'll shatter, but then she remembered the shadow of the dragon as it flashed behind the peak. She looked down at it, and it seemed intact. "Do Alistair next," she instructed. The bard's leather armour could be shucked without assistance, but Loren realized that Alistair would prefer help with his own armour from a woman who was still dressed. She turned, to give him some privacy. It's too bad she didn't bring Sten; he had made no effort to hide his impatience at this quest and it would have been satisfying to see him faced with proof that they weren't wasting their time. Plus, then he'd have to walk through magical fire without so much as his smallclothes. She smiled. Deliberately bringing the ex-templar and the laysister hadn't helped her anyways.

Hearing no more noises of undress behind her, she called, "Ready?" without turning, to spare Alistair's modesty.

"Yes," he said, surprisingly clear and strong. Leliana said nothing. Loren stepped into the flame.

It was like nothing she had ever felt before. The flames flickered over her skin, not hot, but cool and dry like tongues of wind. On her hip, she felt a blue burn, like Wynne's healing spells, only hotter, and like a flash of flame from a dragon's mouth, it ended quite suddenly. The flames on her skin rose, and the air around her pulled in to feed them. The wind rushed through her ribs as if she were hollow, washing them clean. Beside her, she saw Leliana's hair swept like a halo around her head. This was good. This was so much more compelling than the dreams of specific bliss created by the desire demons. Not even they could remove the sense that, any moment, something would change, and whatever that euphoria was based on would be ripped away – the knowledge of all sentient creatures that even the best situations were fleeting, dependent on circumstance. Alistair's sister's good grace: Leliana's ability to sustain prayer: the continued existence of Cabel's sunbeam. This was neither now, nor not-now. This was great. And, in the end, perhaps it was the certainty that this goodness could go on forever that gave Loren the strength to step out of it. Fearlessly, she saw the Maker she never thought she could believe in, and fearlessly she let him go.

Loren stepped back into the plain world, made suddenly new.

It wasn't until Loren had fitted her armour back on that she noticed that the welt was gone. Completely gone. Wynne had taken to healing it at every meal, but even her best efforts had left an invisible softness, like the flesh of overripe fruit, and the wound had opened sooner and deeper each time. Loren almost cried out in relief. One never really appreciates the absence of pain, she thought. Dressed, she stepped ringingly down the corridor.

* * *

None of them spoke until they reached Brother Genitivi. Loren waited while he rushed out.

"I want that dragon," she stated. "I need new armour and I'll need it made to fit. We may as well make the best now, rather than wait and pay again before we face the archdemon." To her surprise, neither of Leliana nor Alistair protested. They must be feeling the same run of power, she thought.

"I will go back to camp," Leliana offered. "I can take Cabel and avoid notice. Zevran's been teaching me," she winked, smiling fully, and Loren understood that Leliana wanted to be alone. "Who do you want?"

"Wynne. And either Morrigan or Sten." Loren thought for a moment, "No, Morrigan. Thank you."

Leliana waved her welcome, and was gone.

"Let's wait outside. It's stuffy in here." Loren looked back at Alistair. He was holding himself differently. Straighter, and his eyes were at once harder and merrier. He looked her straight in the eye and gestured theatrically for her to precede him. She did, as she always did.

Outside, the air was moving lazily, and the smells of summer lay thick over them. Loren hadn't bothered to replace her helmet and the wind seemed to moan over the skin of her face and exposed scalp. She closed her eyes; her skin was singing and her heart beat freer, in a ribcage made suddenly larger. Loren had felt like this once before, newly a hunter and with the ink of her tattoos drying on her face. She was, Loren realized with little grief, no longer a hunter. After her Joining, Loren had felt shaken and scared, not filled with new purpose. To have found that here, in a temple to a human god, seemed bizarre. Well, why not? Perhaps Duncan had been right, on their trip to Ostagar, when he'd knelt to pray to the Maker beside her as she prayed for Strength. _Whatever power there is, I'm sure it will take any prayer made sincerely._ Tamlen had said the same thing once, that Strength and Grace were actually no different. She'd scoffed at them both: at Duncan for his audacity and at Tamlen for thinking his bow and his speed were the same as her might.

Loren turned her whole body to face the wind and the skin of her hip was pinched thin, again, between metal and bone. She flared immediately. She wasn't going to wear this armour any more than she had to. She dropped her gauntlets again, with no more ceremony than before. She startled both herself and Alistair with its clatter. He turned to her, an unfamiliar expression of ease on his face that suited him. He looked happy. "Help me get this off, please. I am tired of being bruised."

"I told you to buy new," he said, not hesitating to reach for her as she raised her arms. His hands were sure and quick on her buckles. Loren caught her breastplate, laying it down more carefully. The wind caught the light linen of her gambeson. Alistair did not step away, but stayed standing close to her. Loren could feel the air between them.

"Listen, Loren. Thank you for bringing me here. I never . . . I never imagined there would be something like this –" he trailed off, not looking for another word.

Loren blinked. "Don't humans have something like this? For everyone?"

Alistair looked a bit bewildered.

"And here I thought it was just the Grey Wardens with no sense of ceremony," Loren laughed, kindly. Alistair grinned back.

"Mages do, but it's . . . it's not at all like this: threats of imminent death, templars in their bucket helmets, demons."

"Yeah, not quite the same. Elves do. It is different than this, but felt the same," Loren thought of Duncan again. "Our tattoos are a reminder."

"The Joining – " Alistair started, but Loren waved a hand through his words.

"The Joining serves a purpose, Alistair. It's not - " she shook her head, then moved closer to him and placed two fingers under his chin, as a Keeper would at the end of the ceremony, to bring the new adult's eyes to meet hers for the first time. Alistair was already staring unblinkingly at her. "Today, Alistair, you are a man." The translation sounded inelegant to her, but it must not have to him. He flushed, and Loren felt that some spell would be broken if she moved, but she had no desire to break this contact. The moment stretched and Loren looked into his clear blue eyes, then he gripped her forearm, hard, and pulled her the last few inches towards him. Her fingers folded meekly, then curved around his jaw as he crushed her mouth with his. Loren could tell immediately that this was his first kiss; his lips were slack and his jaw was tight, but his body seemed to hum like a struck bell against hers. She felt its ring soak right through to her ribs, to her larger, freer heart.

Loren pressed her fingers to his jaw, holding him back and lightening the pressure on both their mouths. Alistair made a small noise, halfway between a whimper and a growl. Loren pulled his lower lip between her own two lips and sucked gently. His free arm wrapped her lower back, holding her hard against him. Her groin was ground into the metal of his armour, and the flat press of it excited her. Alistair always took instruction well and he pulled her upper lip into his own mouth, running his tongue along the soft lining on its inside, biting softly. Loren opened her mouth and their tongues met, at first thick and hungry, then, as Loren pulled back again, light, alternating with the softly scraping edges of teeth.

It was Loren who broke the kiss first, pulling her arm from his grasp and moving her mouth to the strong line of his jaw. Stubble caught on her swollen lips and she laid the inside of her bottom lip on the skin over his jawbone. Alistair stretched his neck open towards her. Loren increased the space between them, enough to get her hands on the buckles of his armour. Alistair's newly freed hand joined his other where Loren's lower back flared into buttocks. His hands, flat on her body, moved up her spine, causing the linen to bunch at the bottom of her neck. Then he ran his hands back down, apparently at a loss for what else to do with them. Loren raised herself slightly on her toes and arched her hips back into his hands. One more buckle on this side. Alistair gripped the flesh of her hips, pulling her in again and lowering his head back to her mouth. She turned her head, not wanting to be distracted from removing all this metal as quickly as she could. She wanted to feel his warmth. He closed his hot mouth on her ear instead. She groaned, her skin being wetly massaged over the cartilage forming her earlobe. Taking this as encouragement, Alistair rand his hands up her sides, from hip towards her breasts. He stopped, hesitated, with the heels of his palms achingly close. At last, the buckle released and Alistair's armour fell sideways. He dropped an arm, letting it slide off, still buckled on one side: the empty shell of a man. Loren pulled her breasts from the nearness of his hand and stooped to unbuckle a greave. Alistair stretched to reach the other and both fell away.

Elf and man straightened, both in their linen gambesons. Alistair's eyes were clouded and confused, and wouldn't meet hers.

"Loren . . ." he started croakingly, but she was already on the way to his mouth. She kissed him again, hands on either side of his rough face. She kissed him again, tenderly, and his mouth stayed still under her lips. She pulled away.

"Loren." His eyes were closed. "Loren, I am so sorry."

She looked at him, her arousal making her head thick and uncomprehending. There was no way he wasn't enjoying this. His face left her cupped hands, and he reached for his discarded breastplate. He flipped it over his arm so it fell onto his one shoulder and started gathering his other pieces. "I got carried away. I had no right. I just felt . . . I got carried away." Loren laughed, much less kindly than she had before. It was a sharp bark, loud in the slightly blowing air. Alistair flushed red and turned tail into the trees.

"Alistair!" Loren called, but he didn't reappear. She was too frustrated to feel amused or angry, and she sank to the ground, spreading her legs for herself. She was wet through and through, and swollen. She slipped a finger inside herself; it slid easily. Her own audible moan cut off the last half-formed thoughts swirling in her brain. She had never wanted to come so badly and she had never been so ready or so easy. With her other hand, she just touched her swollen, slick clit. She just touched it and she was gone. The significance of her arousal was lost on her as she spun, hard.

* * *

The dragon fell fast. Whenever her great head turned to one of the spell casters, Loren let the weight of her maul fall fast on some extremity – toes were particularly effective, even if each toe was the size of Loren's foot – or Alistair slipped the tip of his handaxe under an enormous scale and pried it upward. The retaliations for these provocations were quickly healed away.

Once, the dragon caught Morrigan in her beaky snout and shook her like a lion shakes a rat. Loren caught Alistair's expression as he bludgeoned the creature with his shield. His face was red and contorted, eyes wide and a pocket of air pushing his lower lip out. The dragon dropped the mage, who transformed into a swarm mid-fall and swept away. Alistair did not stop his relentless pounding, though his face reddened with the strain. The shield sank into the beast's thick skin. When one blow bowed the creature's front elbow inward, she turned and lowered her head to Alistair. He extended his left arm as far back as he could and swung it, straight-elbowed, to connect with the bones forming her skull. It was a stupid mark, and Alistair's look of rage crumpled into surprised pain. Loren leapt forward, between him and the head, and swung her maul in a great sidewards arc, keeping her elbows bent to absorb the impact. Loren felt the creature's muzzle collapse just as she saw Morrigan's ethereal fist sink solidly, sickeningly, in the dragon's ribcage. Her ribs sank inward and the creature fell sideways. She whimpered like a dog, and her breath blew a bloody mist over Loren's greaves. She struggled to free the wing pinned beneath her. Alistair shoved Loren roughly away as he drew a dagger from his belt. He plunged it deep into the dragon's upturned eye, the weapon sinking past its hilt before it found something vital in the brain. Blood poured down Alistair's arm. The dragon twitched several times, then was still. Alistair pulled the sword out, and Loren recognized it as Duncan's from the shape alone; the blade was uniformly gorey.

"Happy?" asked Alistair, not quite suppressing a snarl.


	3. The Long Road

A/N:

Now that we've gotten to know our characters, I needed to slow the plot just a bit. The M rating is put on a brief hiatus while our two lovers figure a few things out, but I promise that it will return. :)

**This is Better: The Long Road**

* * *

The party was unusually silent walking back to camp, and every few steps, Loren would remember with sickening detail the dragon's muzzle crinkling inward like the crust of a roll, and the ring of the gong she'd chosen to strike. The drakes they'd needed to get by, Flemeth was a threat to her friend, even the wolves back in the Wilds had attacked them. She was acting like a shemlan. She thought of the shemlan temple and the shemlan god running through her, the relief from pain and the expansive possibility. She pushed the excuse away; whatever power had been at the mountain, she had acted on her own. Loren had felt purified by the fire, exhilarated and giddy by her second brush with the divine, but knew that the rashness was entirely her own defect. She thought of Brother Genitivi rushing back to Denerim with the news of the Urn. Better to have told him they'd failed. Better to have left the dragon to deter the human hordes headed this way. She thought of her initiation, her face in the Keeper's hands and the surge of power from being made her own person. It had been sunny the day that she'd initiated. No, she thought; they deserved a chance to ruin it for themselves.

She adjusted the pack on her back, the pack with the dragonscales in it. She'd have the armour made; she knew she would even as the creature had died in front of her. She'd have the armour made, and she'd wear it to the exclusion of all others to remind her. She'd make this good.

Satisfied, Loren looked around at her companions. Wynne, of all people, was leading. Morrigan was walking a little apart, humming softly to herself and stripping leaves from their stems. Alistair stalked as far from the others as he could be and remain in sight. His axe and his shield were strapped to his back, but Loren could see that he held his left arm from swinging. He hadn't seen Wynne about it, then. She remembered his face, crumpled with shame, as he'd retreated into the trees away from her. At least she'd lasted longer than Alistair, who'd groped his way to shame in minutes. She smiled thinly to herself.

Cabel burst out of the bushes at them, throwing himself first on Loren, then wagging his stumpy tail and thrusting his bulk against each of their legs in turn. Loren smiled despite herself. She'd taken Cabel after Ostagar for his obvious usefulness, but his unrelenting good cheer had, at some point, become a great and unexpected comfort. Alistair bent to pet the mabari's face and the dog set to enthusiastic work at the gore on Alistair's face and arms. The other two women hurried by, knowing camp was close. Alistair bent his face between the dog's sharp shoulder blades while Cabel, more methodical than ecstatic now, licked industriously at the grooves in Alistair's right gauntlet.

Loren waited for the two women to move past them and out of earshot, before speaking coldly, "Alistair, I need you to look after yourself. I can see you shoulder still hurts you. What if we'd been ambushed? I'm counting on you, on each of us, to do what we can to take care of ourselves and each other." He did not look up from the dog, though his back straightened. Loren ploughed on, "Also, bludgeoning the dragon like that was foolish. Save the heroics for when we need them. In the meantime, do try to use your head."

"Of course," he said, the unspoken _ser_ in the air.

"Good." Loren paused, then spoke again, her voice a little louder and higher, as if that would overcome her distaste of her words, "Also, I apologize. Going after the dragon was a mistake." Alistair said nothing. Loren stood a few minutes, waiting for him to continue the conversation while he stroked the still-licking Cabel absently. Cabel's tongue seemed to smack wetly against something in his mouth with each swipe. The longer Loren stood, waiting, the more disgusting it got.

She tapped her fingers on the heavy chain on her leggings. It clinked. Still, Alistair did not speak. Loren left.

In camp, Leliana was still on her high. Grinning broadly, she gestured at the heavy pot near the fire, which smelled both light and herby.

"Herbs from Orlais! I've been saving them for a special day, and what day could be more special than this?" The bard threw her arms around Loren, and when she spoke, it was softer, and for Loren alone. "Thank you for bringing me today. I followed the Maker when He told me to follow you, and you have led him back to Him. My faith has been rewarded." Loren clung to the taller woman, gripped with a sudden fierce grief. It crashed inside her. Leliana tightened her arms around Loren's slumped body, supporting her, and said nothing.

It passed as quickly as it had come. Loren stood upright again and looked into Leliana's green eyes, bright with joy. "I am the one who should be grateful. Your company is a gift." Leliana leaned her forehead against Loren's. Loren had never been so close to another person without the excuse of sex. The moment seemed to extend herself out of herself, sweetly, like a morning's stretch. It was Loren who pulled away, but there were tears in Leliana's bright eyes.

"Come now," she said. "I've been aching to know what you think of Orelesian food. I am hoping that you love it, and will come back to Orlais with me, later, when this is all done." Loren smiled back, and let the taller woman lead her to the pot. This was a much smaller relief, but it had been earned, not granted.

* * *

Arl Eamon was an ass.

Loren had expected that he would be and almost regretted getting rid of his terribly annoying wife for him. Still, help for the Wardens was hard to come by. Loren understood enough of human politics from Leliana to see how he, personally, stood to gain from his pledge. It would have been one thing if she believed he was motivated by Ferelden's, the Warden's, or even Alistair's good, but she'd seen how Alistair wilted in his presence and knew that neither Ferelden nor the Wardens would fare any better under his suspect benevolence. Eamon had refused to help Loren arm his own men for the battle, despite the obvious wealth laying about his castle. Loren vowed to let Leliana loot whatever she wanted from any nobleman's house in the future and told her to start in the Arl's study. Leliana had come out with a bard-sweet smile over the audible clinking from her bodice, and they'd somehow left unharassed. When they got back to camp, Alistair had disappeared immediately into his tent, but whether he was upset about his future royal status or about Leliana pouring Eamon's treasure out the top of her shirt, Loren had no idea. She was watching Leliana and Zevran sort through it all when a particular pendant caught her eye.

From Redcliffe, Loren steered the party to Denerim. They were in need of funds and supplies and she knew they could find both there. It was a reasonably happy march. There were two treaties left to fill, but for the first time since leaving Redcliffe, there was no second calamity chasing the party across Ferelden. Loren felt content to be doing what she was doing. She decided to have Sten organize scouting and defense, and while she carried her maul on the outside of her pack, it was a relief to have someone else do the thinking for a few weeks. She was able to join in the banter of her companions. She was determined to be on better terms with everyone. At first, she just joined in Leliana's conversations, but soon felt comfortable enough to talk to everyone. By the time they made camp outside Denerim, she had added an elf, a thaig, and a sword to her list of things to find, and a great deal more to her knowledge of the world beyond the Dalish camps. Twice, she had tried to approach Alistair, but despite his cheerfulness with everyone else, he had found something else, immediately, to do. She let it go.

One night, she asked Zevran to tattoo her arm. The two elves had sat by the fire, hunched over a piece of parchment to work on the design. Zevran had green ink from Antiva, where the Ferelden Dalish had only black, which was a stark contrast on Loren's pale skin. They settled on a sweeping pattern of Zevran's design. It rolled from her elbow to the wrist of her dominant hand. It was neither an elven design nor anything recognizable as Andraste's; it was new, something he'd invented with neither in mind.

The march was not without its dangers. Twice, they'd found darkspawn on the road. Once, a terribly orchestrated ambush, and, most strangely, a crater with a darkly gleaming metal that Alistair was able to pry out of the rock with a particularly sharp cheeseknife they'd found in the food sack. Loren wrapped this carefully in her spare gambeson and stowed it in her own bag.

Loren had her party strike camp a few hours outside Denerim. Inside her tent, she hesitated a moment before hoisting her armour onto her body. She had told no one of her decision regarding the dragonscale armour; it was the sort of thing that cheapened when shared. Leliana had grown more and more silent as they'd come closer to the city and putting off her pledge to help seemed a poor way to practice better judgement. She emerged armoured and carrying a small bag

"Leliana and I have an errand to run in Denerim tonight. Wynne, we'd appreciate your help." Leliana had requested that as few people as possible be told, but Wynne could be trusted to keep the younger woman's secret. Cabel would be the fourth. "Sten, you have first watch." Loren swung the bag to her front and reached inside. "Lastly," she busied herself groping in the bag. "I want you all to know how much I appreciate you. Really. This isn't much, but, please, find something for yourselves while we're here. We'll be buying equipment later, so don't feel accountable for this."

* * *

Alistair was on watch when the women got back, and Loren offered to stay up for the next. Leliana hugged her good night before heading into her tent, but Wynne peered suspiciously at the two Wardens before heading into her own.

Alistair approached with his small moneybag. "I don't want this."

"Well, throw it away then. I hardly have a use for it."

"I find that difficult to believe."

Loren was completely bewildered, "I assure you, I don't. As a Dalish . . ."

Alistair snorted. "Enough of your elf this, elf that. We're broke. The Wardens could use it."

"Those things are a bit a dozen! And it's broken! If you don't want it, throw it away."

"What?"

Comprehension bloomed. "You didn't open it, did you?"

"Zevran said it was enough for a trip to the Pearl."

"Zevran's was. Yours is not." She shook her head. "We _are_ broke, and I figured you needed the least bribing." Truth was, she had already decided to not give Alistair anything, but this was already theirs. And worthless. He tugged at the knot holding the bag shut. "I've been trying to give it to you since Redcliffe, but you keep running away from me." The amulet fell into his hand. He held it, the firelight blinking off its cracked edges. Alistair's face softened and Loren briefly considered telling him that _she_ had fixed it, just so the man wouldn't get all sentimental about Eamon. She cleared her throat, "Leliana found it." Alistair turned it over in his hands a few times.

"Thank you."

She responded, unconsciously in elven, before correcting herself. "Alistair, let's start over."

"What?"

"Let's start over. I screwed up with Isolde," Loren still felt that Isolde was entirely his fault, but the apology was cheap. She took his hand and forced a pleading note into her tone, "and I screwed up with the dragon. I'm sorry, and I need your help. Can we pretend we barely know each other again? That worked best."

Alistair pulled his hands from hers, "I really don't think that is going to work for me."

Her voice thinned and got higher, "Alistair, I need us to be friends and to help each other. Please."

He'd heard this tone of hers before and felt himself resenting it. Struggling to stay honest with her, he closed his eyes so that her insincerely desperate face was not visible. He took a deep breath and plunged into the sore spot. If she wanted to be friends, they had to talk about it. "I was so ashamed, and then I was so angry, and then I was ashamed for being angry, and ... confused." He opened his eyes again, wanting to see her reaction.

When she spoke again, it was in exactly the same tone she'd used with Bevin when they'd found him locked inside the dresser: "Why were you ashamed?"

"Loren," he said, warningly.

"Tell me why you were ashamed," and she laid a hand on his arm.

He jerked it away, "Forget it."

She shrugged and dropped the tone abruptly, "Fine, but whatever it was, make peace with it. It was quite the afterglow and Leliana had the right idea, slipping away into the forest with the dog. You have nothing to make amends for to me." She turned her face to the pot by the fire and wondered if there was anything left.

Alistair turned back to her. She raised an eyebrow without meeting his eye and the two stood by the fire awkwardly. He kept his eyes on her face as he spoke, "I've been thinking, again, about what you said to me after we saw Goldanna: about being out for myself."

Loren's familar fog descended on her again. Suddenly tired, she forced herself to keep her tone normal, "What about it?"

"It's not easy."

Tamlen flashed again in Loren's mind; Tamlen silently slicing the pressed package of hunting rations in the rain. The clan she both missed and was glad to be free of. Ashalle, closing Loren up in the aravel: her and her eldest daughter dressed for hunting. Isolde desperately groping for a future for her son; Morrigan repulsed by her mother's kindness. Sten's desire for a weapon he admitted was inferior to the one he currently wielded. Behind all these images was the cleansing cool of Andraste's trial and the dragon's pained whimpering. She looked away from him. "No. It's not."


	4. More Gross Liquids?

A/N: This is a few days later than I'd intended; I was in a conference at my university that just ended a few hours ago, and there was some family stuff this week to boot. All is well now - including the presentation that I rocked. :)

Thanks for spending some of your day with me.

**This is Better: More Gross Liquids?**

* * *

Loren swung her Chasind Maul at the nearest skeleton. It connected, and the bones scattered themselves across the snow. This was her first battle in Wade's dragonscale armour and she felt like singing with joy for it. It was made to fit, obviously, and there wasn't an inch of skin pressed or a limb loose anywhere in this suit. This she had expected, but what she had not counted on was the way that the armour seemed to want to be worn, want Loren to fight. It seemed to charge the second skeleton for her; it seemed to help her swing her maul into its skull. It seemed to like to fight, like to kill. Loren was almost disappointed when she saw that they were done. She refused to meet Alistair's eye as they all resheathed their weapons; she didn't want him to see how much she had enjoyed battering Warden skeletons into loose bones.

"You are pleased with your armour then?" Morrigan, at least, seemed to have noticed Loren's expression.

"You have no idea."

The mage looked amused. "Glad to hear it. Onward, then? The air here hums most curiously."

* * *

Two bottles had shone darkly on the dusty desk. Two, and Loren could feel the taint in them. They weren't darkspawn blood, thought the liquid was as dark and thick, nor did they trill on the edges of Loren's sense, like the darkspawn did. They were closer to the thrum she felt when Alistair was near, though it didn't quite match that either. Two bottles, two wardens, a new kind of taint. Loren did not feel comforted. She looked at Alistair beside her, whose eyes were unfocused. She knew he was "feeling" them out as well. Behind them, Morrigan shifted.

"What do you think?" Loren had asked her fellow Warden. He tilted his head.

"He has no idea, obviously. Give them to me." Loren handed a bottle over to Morrigan while Alistair picked up the other. Morrigan closed her fist around it and closed her eyes. Not for the first time, Loren wondered what magic felt like. Was it like the taint, a buzz on the edge of your awareness that you had to learn to interpret and manipulate? If so, no wonder people were terrified to discover they were mages. Was it the same for Keepers or was human magic different?

"There is magic in them, but that is not all. I cannot tell you more." She had handed the bottle back to Loren. "Drink it, or don't, but we must be on." Loren pocketed it.

Now, sitting in what used to be Sophia Dryden's study, Loren thought that Avernus's explanation had not made the way clearer. Morrigan had requested that they spend the night here, as she had things she wished to discuss with the ancient mage. Alistair had shot Loren a dark look when she'd agreed, but the two Wardens had agreed to disagree about Morrigan, so he had said nothing. Both mages had declared the Veil repaired, night was coming on, and Loren wanted to discuss the vials with Alistair with fewer ears about. The templar had cleared Dryden's body from the office and Loren had rekindled the fire, so the chill in the air was retreating. Cabel was already twitching on the thin rug. Loren was sitting beside him when Morrigan and Avernus had returned, carrying a large chest between them. Loren jumped up, alarmed at the ancient man's effort.

.

"This is what's left of the Grey Warden property here. I have no use for these things." And he left, Morrigan following him out of the room without looking at Loren. The Warden felt a slight twinge – not of alarm, but of warning.

She turned to see Alistair watching her, "That man is as old as Zathrian, and looks far worse."

"Who's Zathrian?" Alistair picked up his axe and sat beside the chest to try and pry the lock loose.

"A Keeper. I met him once, years ago, after my parents died. He knew my father. Anyways, he's immortal, so he looks much better than the mage there."

The lock popped open. Alistair clicked his tongue in self-satisfaction. "Who needs a rogue?" Alistair opened the trunk and began examining its contents. He held up a gauntlet, "There's a whole set here."

"Take it, if you want it. If not, leave it there and I'll figure it out later." Alistair had protested against the templar armour and flat-out refused to wear anything of Cailen's, so his armour was still the group's least impressive.

"It's got a griffon on it," he sounded pleased.

"Wynne will love that," Loren watched while Alistair set the armour aside and turned back to the trunk, digging through it. Loren fingered the vial in her pocket and thought of Duncan handing her the chalice of blood, of Duncan telling her _whatever means necessary_. What was with humans and their blood obsession? She was quite certain that elves never drank such disgusting things, even in their most desperate hours. But perhaps that was why humans ruled Fereldan and they did not. She thought of those secret youth meetings that gathered whenever the Clans did, and their plans to retake Fereldan for the elven.

"So this Zathrian is immortal, and a mage?" Alistair had picked the set of armour out of the trunk and started packing the rest back in it.

Loren narrowed her eyes at him, "Not what you think. All elves used to be, before humans showed up. There's something quick about you – you grow quick, you die quick." Loren was surprised to notice that there was very little bitterness that she needed to force out of her tone. Something about chasing darkspawn across the country, she supposed. "It seems to have rubbed off."

"So, you hanging out with me is killing you?"

She sat herself on the thin carpet, close to the fire's warmth and Alistair shifted away from her, "Drinking darkspawn blood will kill me much more quickly than you will." He snorted in amusement, closed the trunk's lid and slid it to the wall. "We can't breed as fast as we die. I'm sure it's why there are so few elves in the Wardens. Infertility is a high price to pay. Duncan would have known."

"Are you sorry?"

"If I wasn't a Warden, I'd be dead of the Taint." Her tone was dry.

"I mean, are you sorry you can't have children?"

Loren had always been reluctant to have children. She thought of the endless prattle of the smallest, the moodiness of the older ones, and felt bone weary just imagining it. She thought of the way that people looked at children and saw only the mistakes of the parent and the way that parents prodded children into becoming advertisements of success. "Nope. You?"

"Technically, I still could," he broke off. "Well, either of us could, it'd just be harder."

"I suppose that's good for you, right? Humans chose their kings from the sons of the previous king."

"Elves don't?"

"Elves have no kings. Just Keepers, and we vote on those."

"So anyone could be a Keeper? That seems strange."

Loren turned her head contemplatively, "No, it means that the only one who can be Keeper is the one that people think will be best at it."

Alistair was silent for a minute. That just felt funny, though he couldn't put his finger on why. "People don't always chose well, or for the right reasons."

Loren stood. "My father was a Keeper, but I have no magic in me," she reached for her maul, raised it to shoulder height and swung it slowly enough to avoid any momentum. She felt its weight pull on her. "But I am good at this."

Alistair reached out and tapped the maul's long shaft with a finger. "That's a human weapon." Loren set let the weapon's head settle at the bottom of his arc. "Sorry," he muttered.

"It's fine." She crossed one arm over her abdomen, hand clutching her elbow. "It is a human weapon. You and I are both between. I am elvish and a Warden. You are a Warden and the son of a King."

"Let's talk about something else."

"Do you know how few people get to pick like we do?"

"Neither of us got to pick." There was a bitterness in his voice that Loren had never heard before, even when he spoke about Isolde.

"I had to Join, yes. But after Ostagar, who would have stopped my leaving? Two hunted Wardens against a Blight? I could have left, warned my Clan, used my ability to sense darkspawn to lead them to Antiva. Most of my Clan would consider it base treachery that I didn't." Alistair looked stunned. She shrugged, "I chose to stay, and so did you." Loren flipped her maul upward again, holding it parallel to the ground at waist height, feeling its heft all along her arm, feeling the tightness of the muscles under the tattoo. "That's a choice, too."

"Let's talk about the vials," Alistair said, his voice unreadable.

"Let's each decide for ourselves."

"Alright."

Loren sat back down, already knowing what she was going to do. The room was comfortably warm now, and Loren reached for her bedroll. "I'm glad I brought you here." Alistair glanced at her. "The desire demon: Duncan was right – your templar skills balance your combat perfectly."

"Thanks," he seemed genuinely pleased with the praise.

"Could you teach me?"

"Sure. Why not? I've given away all the other Chantry secrets I know. You have to start by disciplining your mind. A quiet mind, empty of thoughts, is less susceptible to magical influence. This doesn't mean you can't feel, of that you should stifle your instinctive reactions. It also doesn't mean you shouldn't make decisions: just that you shouldn't think too hard about any of this. As a warrior, you already know these things . . . ." As he spoke, he began undoing her armour's buckles, almost unconsciously. Once it was off, he raised his arms for her. When they settled down on either side of Cabel for the night, he was still talking.

* * *

The log, finally worn away by the persistent embers, fell with a dry crash. Alistair jerked awake, momentarily unsure where he was. Cabel twitched beside him in the red glow of the dying fire. He leaned forward to check that no embers had landed on the thin carpet and saw that Loren was gone. Twisting, he saw her armour stacked neatly against his own by the door. He poked the dog awake. "Where's Loren?"

The mabari stood and stretched lazily. Alistair wondered if the dog would know if his mistress was in trouble. Cabel had proven his intelligence, but how would he keep track of a woman outside the room? Mind you, he had found her in the Wilds: no mean feat. Cabel stood and padded out of Sophia's office. Alistair took his axe and followed. The dog led him past Avernus's study, where he heard voices. He paused; Morrigan's voice sounded strange to him, low and urgent. He strained to hear. Loren might trust the witch, but he did not. Her words remained indistinct.

The dog was already out of sight when Alistair hurried to catch him. When he did, Cabel was sitting at the base of one of the towers, his eyes raised. Alistair followed his gaze across the crumpling courtyard and up to the opposite rampart. Loren was there, so pale that she seemed to gleam in the moonlight. She was leaning over the raised edge of the walkway, looking down. It would be all forest on that side. She carried no weapon. Her neck was thin and long and he could see the base of her neck and the top of her back over the linen she wore under her gambeson, but it was her head that he watched. It was shaped beautifully. When he'd first seen her, he'd thought her shaved head was some sort of statement – maybe it still was, but he'd also come to see how beautiful the curve of her scalp was. She had her hair reshaven in Denerim, and he could still see her skin under it. With no hair to distract the eye, the elf's high cheekbones, grey eyes, and strong mouth were arresting. For some reason, her ears seemed less so. Alistair had caught himself staring at the tips of Zevran's, but hers seemed normal now.

Alistair thought of the men he'd known in the Wardens before Ostagar and how different, how much easier this would have been with one of them. The gulf between what he knew and what Loren knew seemed, sometimes, unbridgeable. Their first few attempts at conversation – him explaining the Reverend Mother's summons to the mage, the injured soldier in the marsh – had been like talking to a wall with eyes. Grey, unblinking, uncomprehending eyes. Why hadn't she just asked what a templar was, if she didn't know? Alistair thought of the dwarves that were their next stop and felt apprehensive.

As he considered her, Loren reached into her pocket. Alistair couldn't see her hand, but knew she was reaching for the vial. Standing straight, she unstopped it and smelled. He'd known all along what she was going to do. She'd let loose blood mages, dumped bodies into wells for money, taken contracts on men's lives, and killed Flemeth just because Morrigan had asked her to. He watched her rotate it: her long white fingers and the black vial. When she finally drank it, she grimaced and then threw the vial as far as she could, away from her and into the trees.

Alistair groped for his own vial, thumbed the cork off, and downed it. He felt a surge of vitality, and heard a few bars of a distant, enticing song. The urge to hear more left him as quickly as the song had come. The taint burned in his blood and he felt his blood must be glowing, lighting the sky like a beacon. He could see that he wasn't – Loren looked the same, distant and pale on the ramparts. After a time – a minute, an hour, a condensed lifetime? – the sensation faded. In its place was the taint in his blood, sounding from deeper within him and reaching higher than it had before. The thrum of Loren's taint answered back – both deeper and higher than it had been before. They would never have been able to keep their decision secret from each other. Alistair felt her, felt his blood and hers, but she did not turn.

* * *

"It's the Call. They are drawn by it – the only beautiful thing they'll ever experience." Avernus's voice was like paper. Though Morrigan had always prided herself on valuing power alone, she felt repulsed by the man, despite the obvious power that gathered around him.

"Is it the soul or the power that draws them?"

"Who's to say they are separate?"

Morrigan snorted softly. "Who's to say they aren't?"

Avernus smiled, lips looking like they might crack. "You are young in the arts. A mortal's soul is a fragment of a god's, split off long ago and left adrift. We long for the wholeness we've lost, build Chantries and towers and write songs in search of it, but it is only in the longing that we ever catch a glimpse. A god's soul is a reflection of something else, something much larger, that we cannot comprehend."

"Anything is comprehensible, given the time and intelligence to study it."

Avenus continued as if Morrigan had never spoken and she had to quell to desire to set him on fire. "What is it that you think a god might sing for?"

"Can you stop the Call?"

Avernus' eyes refocused on her again. "I ask you again: what do you think a god might sing for?"

"I . . . do not know."

"Of course you don't. Not even I know, and I have studied for many long centuries."

Morrigan stood in the cold air of Avernus' study, wanting to scream in her frustration. The man could help her, she knew it. "Surely you have unlocked something, though, in all these years?"

"Indeed. I can manipulate the power of the taint. This is no trifling accomplishment."

"But nothing of the Call?"

"Only what is pertinent." Morrigan remembered his words to Loren about the snivelling trader: _He heeded my call_. Avernus's eyes were so flat that they could not twinkle, but Morrigan caught a little glimmer of something in them and knew that the man read that thought in her face. He gestured to his desk, piled with notes and books. "Since you seem so determined to meddle, I will assist you. Who knows what you might learn with your recklessness and impatience that may elude my time and tenacity."


	5. Running Deep

A/N: As always, thank you to my readers and my reviewers. Very much appreciated. I think I'm going to update again tomorrow, as I am leaving that afternoon for five days and this chapter ends a little too pat for such a long reprieve. I was going to take my computer with me, but then I realized how libidinous things get in the very near future, and didn't want to be posting that from my grandparents' house in White Rock. I mean, it'll need a good check-though before hand, right? Right.

Again, thanks for spending some of your time with me today.

**This is Better: Running Deep**

* * *

They came at night. Cabel's frantic barks and Bodahn Feddic's alarmed yells drew Loren from her tent, her armour flapping loose on one side, greaves and gauntlets left behind. She flew at the shriek beside Cabel, her maul connecting with its chin. It crumpled and Cabel fell on it, fangs first, as Loren turned to another. Sten and Alistair were still dressed from their watch and they stepped between the mages and the darkspawn. Shale pinched them from behind. Zevran fell behind Loren's new target and Lelianna rained arrows. Alistair had just struck a hurlock rushing Wynne when he heard Loren's strangled cry. By the time the hurlock was down, Loren was nowhere to be seen. Alistair cursed.

The battle, for all its surprise, was over quickly. Alistair left Leliana picking over the corpses and Sten organizing the burning of bodies and felt out for Loren. This was much easier now. She was at the back of camp, by the cliff face that saved them from being surrounded. He covered the ground in long strides.

Loren was bent over the body of a darkspawn, the left side of its head crushed, like a dropped melon. It'd stood still for the deathshot then. Stunned? Loren was speaking to it and he strained to hear her, but she was speaking in the slurred consonants of elven. Alistair caught sight of the ghoul's long ear. It was elvish.

He joined her by the body as she closed its one whole eye. She stood. "Tamlen," she said as she stepped away. "I knew he wasn't dead." Alistair reached out, gripped her arm and pulled her to him. As he did so, he remembered the last time he had held her this close and he tensed. She neither pulled away, nor softened. She just let him hold her, cold.

He spoke over her unmoving head, "Killing him was the merciful act."

"The merciful act would have been to look for him after we found that mirror. Duncan talked me out of it." Her voice was unemotional, but she still did not pull away.

"Duncan had to come to Ostagar. There would have been no time."

"There is rarely time for elves." There was no heat in Loren's voice, but Alistair stepped away from her anyways.

"That's not fair."

"You weren't there. Duncan had days to look for Tamlen while I was unconscious and he didn't. Duncan had time to search for and destroy the mirror, but he didn't have time for an elf. An elf who resisted the taint a long time."

"Loren . . ."

"No, Alistair," she gripped his arm tight. "You listen to me for a minute. Duncan screwed up. He could have searched for Tamlen, and he didn't. He could have told Cailen and Loghain that Wardens could hear darkspawn and that he could hear the Archdemon calling for them, but he didn't." She forestalled his argument with a raised finger, "I know it's a Warden secret, but the secret almost cost Ferelden all the Wardens it had. It was a mistake. It's fine, but you and I don't have to make the same mistakes. We don't have to do what people like Duncan or Eamon tell us to do. They're not here; Duncan is dead and Eamon would have been but for us. I'm not going to blindly follow anymore. I want my mistakes to be my own."

"Duncan and Eamon –"

"Let you down, Alistair! Maybe they were good men, but they completely failed to protect what they should have. I'm done with them."

"What does that mean, you're done with them?"

"It means that I owe them nothing. Not my loyalty, and not my revenge."

"You think you can do better?"

"I know that I'll do better without carrying the weight of what they want. And you would too, but that's your choice." She let him go, and picked up her maul. "I know I can't bury Tamlen, but I don't think I want to see him burn. Can I leave it to you?"

"Of course." He did so, and then we went to his tent for the rose. It wasn't the best time, but they were running out of time. It went well.

* * *

What Loren had not counted on in the Deep Roads was the smell. For once, Leliana had not complained to be left behind: "I do not envy you this task. Come home quickly." Even Sten, who Loren would have thought would be eager to see darkspawn as they were between Blights, had looked relieved when Oghren showed up and Loren had told the qunari to go back. Shale had insisted on coming, and Loren wanted Alistair's darkspawn sense as well as her own. The rest of their companions stayed in Orzammar, charged with the task of selecting one of the two contenders. Loren had tried to walk a fine line, but she had feeling Branka might not care for politics.

But the stink! Loren wondered how long it'd been since air circulated. Neither Oghren nor Shale seemed bothered by the endless, indiscriminate night or by their total inability to tell time. They walked; they ate; they fought; they slept. Loren supposed that's all they did on the surface, but somehow the changing light and the rotation of seasons seemed to give it a little more meaning. Here, the time they couldn't measure pressed hard on her.

Loren knew they hadn't been walking long when she smelled fresh water. She turned to her companions, grinning, "Smell that?"

Oghren belched and Shale merely raised a stony eyebrow, but Alistair inhaled deeply and grinned. "Enough for a bath, you think?"

The two Wardens rushed ahead and found that there was enough for a bath, if you didn't mind blue lips. They didn't. Even Oghren shucked his armour and waded into the black water.

"Is this safe?" Alistair asked.

"Sure," said Oghren, too flippant to be reassuring. "Not enough light to support anything big."

But there was light, enough for the surface of the lake to shine ominously. Far, far above them was a spot of light, like a single star. "It must be daytime," Loren said.

The Alistair-head shape turned to it. "Daylight," he said wistfully.

"My thoughts exactly! Creepy as a legless nug." The Wardens caught each other's eye, but neither corrected the dwarf.

They swam to the edge of the water and climbed out, their flesh as cold as stone. Loren shuddered as she reached for her armour. This may have been a bad idea.

"Is there enough air for a fire, do you think?" Alistair sounded chilled.

Oghren turned his face upward and was silent a moment, "There's some movement in the air, so yeah, I think so. You'll be able to tell right quick if there isn't." He pulled out dried nug droppings from his pack. They smelt bad, but burned hot and long.

"It wants to stay here, then?" Shale's voice boomed from the darkness. "Good, I wish to stay."

Loren hesitated. She knew they had not been walking long, and the fact that she knew it was day made her keen to press on. But she was cold, and their water was low. Better to stay here and drink their fill before moving on with fresh water. "Yes. Let's camp."

The three fleshy companions built a fire and spread their rolls around it. Loren decided to try softening their rations in heated water. The water itself was good – pure and clear in the pot – and they made a meal of tasteless gruel. Still, it was warm, they were clean, and spirits ran high. The lake was in a closed cavern, so they only needed to watch its opening, where some movement of the air pulled the fire's smoke down the corridor. Shale wanted watch alone, and stamped along the cavern's entrance. Oghren settled down to snoring, but Loren was not tired. She cleaned her armour by the fire's light and set it to dry by its heat. She unpacked and then repacked her pack. She stood and walked to the water's edge: the cavern was getting a bit lighter. It must have been dawn earlier. The thought made her restless. She pointed at a tongue of rock that pushed out over the water on the pool's adjacent edge.

"Do you think we could get there?"

Alistair was caught by her whimsy. "Up there? Oh, definately. No problem." Loren stood up. "You mean now? Then, no. I was there earlier. No way." He grinned at the impatient noise she made in the back of her throat and stood up. "Well, if you must find out for yourself, I guess I'll come."

The approach was on the dark side of the point. It would have been an easy climb in the light, but in the dark, there was much running of hands over the rock's slick surface and confused conversation about where hands and feet should go. Finally, they tumbled onto a platform. Loren started up its incline, but Alistair caught her hand and held it.

"Go slow. If you fall to your death, all Ferelden will be in a very sorry state."

"Fereldan would be fine. I'm sure, underneath it all, you're actually a fine leader."

"Ha! Last time I led anything, it was a trip to the larder and somehow two of us ended up with no pants."

"Hmm. That can happen. Pants can be . . . slippery." Loren edged onwards, letting Alistair keep a hold on her other hand. Loose rock rolled under her feet, but she finally caught the light of their distant fire. It showed her the rock's edge and she pulled from Alistair. She exhaled. "Alistair, come. It's astounding."

It was. Far above them, the pinprick of light glowed steadily, casting a vague shadow about them and reflecting off the pool some two hundred feet below. It had gone still again, so the reflection was as still as the light above. The fire glowed distant and orange, illuminating the water's edge, black on grey stone.

They'd be standing some time when Alistair spoke. "I think Duncan told me about a place like this."

Neither had mentioned Duncan or Eamon since the night of the attack. "Duncan had been in the Deep Roads?"

"Years ago, he said. Before I was born. He mentioned it only in passing."

"I wonder what he wanted here."

"Recruits, I'm sure. Duncan said that since dwarves fought darkspawn all the time, they made excellent wardens, if you could convince them to leave."

"But recruiting in the Deep Roads?"

"Maybe he was looking for the Legion." Loren thought this unlikely, but said nothing. The two Wardens stood a while, looking out at more space than they'd seen since they entered Orzammar. "Listen, I'm awful at this. There's something I've been meaning to ask you, and I'll never get a better chance. This is just a really bad segue way." Loren thought she knew what was coming, and she knew it was a bad idea. The last two Wardens in Ferelden. An elf and a king. The fact that she'd be ostracized and he'd never been with anyone before. She also knew she wasn't going to say no, that the thumping of her heart was going to overwhelm these excellent reasons. She waited. "You're not going to help me at all, are you? Heartless woman."

Her gut squirmed pleasantly, "Ask me, Alistair."

"Okay. In Haven, when I . . ."

"Kissed me." Her tone was light, but she felt much warmer than she had in days.

"Yeah. I want to say that I was embarrassed because it took me so by surprise, and it didn't seem to surprise you and I worried . . . ." His hand groped for hers again, and when he found it, he held one finger tightly, restlessly. "This isn't the sort of thing that I'd do lightly, but I want to. Very much. And it's a terrible time, running against a Blight, and I worry that this just seems so good because it's all so intense, or that I don't know how to read you at all." He took a breath. "Do you think you could, someday, care about me?"

Loren turned her hand in his, so that more of their skin was touching. "Yes," she said. Her smile was audible, even though her back was to the two distant lights. The real, and the reflected. "Definitely."

And it was hard to tell who kissed who. It was definitely Alistair who pinned her hand between the griffon on his armour and his hand, and it was definitely Loren who placed the fingers of her other hand on his neck. They kissed carefully, their lips pulling slightly against each other. It shot through the elf, light and sweet, and her heart moaned. Her Clan was far from here anyways. Alistair placed the fingers of his other hand under her chin, tilting her gently up and his lip moved on hers, sliding gently past the tension of her mouth and pulling slightly on her lower lip. He pulled away, but not so far that she couldn't feel his lips move, achingly close, when he spoke. "Too fast?"

But he was running his hand over her captured one, pushing her fingers apart and sliding up them and Loren knew he was not worried.

"If you don't do that again, I'm going to throw you off this cliff." So he did.


	6. Inevitable

A/N: There's more Sten here. I loved Sten.

His line translates as, "Struggle is an illusion. The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless. There is nothing to struggle against. Victory is in the Qun." I got that off the wiki, but if anyone can tell me who wrote the two lines of poetry that he recites later in the chapter, I'll write you a story on any topic you want. I've bastardized the already bastardized translation.

Thanks for spending some of your time with me today. See you all next weekend!

**This is Better: Inevitable**

* * *

"What do you mean, you can't call a Landsmeet in the winter?" Loren wished, not for the first time, that she could tower over human men the way she could tower over most elven. Stretching to her fullest height, she only reached Eamon's chin. "You're going to let this civil war drag on until spring just because we're a couple months late?

Eamon glanced over the top of Loren's head at Alistair and addressed him instead. "Most Arls won't come in the winter, and the civil war will wait until the spring; no one marches armies in the winter."

"Darkspawn do!" Loren erupted. "You think the Archdemon will just lie low all winter? Maybe take up embroidery?" A lady in waiting, embroidering with the help of a young elven girl on a nearby bench, shot Loren a look, but Eamon had no good answer. The room, full of assorted lesser noblemen in unscratched armour, was noiseless. "Why don't we just muster our own army then? If _no one_ marches in the winter, will Loghain just let us get on with it?" Briefly, Loren thought she might be able to get out of crowning another King.

"No. Loghain would still march against you."

"Why is it that the one general in Ferelden who seems to know how to fight a war is working against us?" Loren raged at the assorted men in the room. Only Bann Teagan looked thoughtfully into her glare, and Loren caught the elven girl glance admiringly in his direction. Alistair was stone still behind her.

* * *

Hours later, the companions sat about in Loren's room, Sten's battered map of Fereldan laid open on a tiny table in the middle. Alistair's room was bigger, but much nearer the Arl's own, and Loren did not want to be overheard. Alistair looked distinctly uncomfortable in the small room, and stood conspicuously far from Loren. She sighed. They'd agreed that they'd be best to keep whatever they had secret for the time being, but Alistair's obvious nervousness around her had caught everyone's attention.

"What I do not understand is why they all bother wearing armour at all." Morrigan's voice was surprisingly soothing when Loren felt this restless. Perhaps it was the knowledge that if she just decided to start swinging, Morrigan would back her right up.

Leliana was lying sideways across Loren's bed, her hip's curve exaggerated. Loren found that a little reassuring as well; she wanted to put her hand on it. "All men need to pretend that they are strong. You'll find them much more co-operative if you appeal to their sense of chivalry, rather than to their insecurities." Morrigan scoffed. "It's true!"

"What I do not understand is how humans managed to drive off the Qunari."

Loren slapped her open palm several times on the legs of her dragonscale armour. "Where's Zevran?"

As if he had been summoned, he appeared at her door, dressed in plain clothes and carrying several bottles of dark liquid. Wynne raised her eyebrows. "Looting the larder, Zevran?"

"You'd be surprised at how easily an unarmoured elf can simply walk into places otherwise forbidden to him." He waggled his blonde eyebrows at the mage, then sat on the bed beside Leliana. "Now then, glasses? Time to celebrate!"

Sten intoned, "I fail to see what we have to celebrate. Our plans have been delayed and the archdemon will strengthen herself as Ferelden sleeps. I suspect the country will be lost and suggest that we retreat elsewhere to recruit more Wardens. When we re-enter this county, this Loghain will be dead and we can fight only what matters."

Silence reigned again, until Alistair felt it necessary for someone to state the obvious. "Forget it. I'm not leaving. If Ferelden falls, I fall."

"Ooooh, yes!" Leliana breathed, "That was lovely Alistair! Exactly the sort of chivalry I was talking about. You should have said that when the Arl was in the room." Morrigan scoffed again.

Privately, Loren agreed with Leliana. "If Ferelden does fall, then the addition of our nine will mean little to a new force. Messages have already been sent to Orlais and Weisshaupt, so we should stay." Every one of Loren's companions seemed strangely appeased by her words. She'd think about that some other day.

Zevran popped a cork. "Well, if nothing else, we can celebrate getting out of the Frostbacks. May we never set foot there again." He raised the bottle, drew a long draught, then passed it to Wynne before starting on the next cork.

"What I would like to discuss is where we should go from here. Should we muster anyways, then march against Loghain? Or should we take the risk that the Archdemon won't show herself until after the thaw?"

"We still have another treaty to fulfill – the elves." Alistair seemed to be trying to look inside the bottle Oghren had nearly drained. Apparently there was some left, and he sipped it cautiously.

Loren waved her hand at this, "The elves will come with us easily. I was planning on having the other armies muster in the forest. I can recruit them while we organize."

"You don't think that's a bit presumptuous? Shouldn't we at least ask them first?"

"They'll come. If it were not me addressing them, perhaps there would be more resistance. But they will follow me, and elves are always ready to fight."

Alistair shrugged, and Wynne took up the previous question. "Will the armies even muster to fight Loghain? I can't imagine that elves or dwarves care much for human thrones: Blight or no. And I'm sad to say that the templars will be very unlikely to let the mages go for anything short of an Archdemon." Wynne was holding Zevran's second bottle in her hands, not passing it along. "This is lovely wine, by the way. Try some." She held the bottle to Loren, who took it and sniffed gingerly. She wrinkled her nose and passed it off to Sten, who refused to even take it. Oghren reached out before Loren had time to offer it to Leliana. Zevran was already leaning close to the prone bard with a third bottle.

"Yes, I agree with you, Loren. A nice wine like this needs room to breathe! You and I shall share this one, after a few minutes." She took it from Zevran and set it on Loren's bedstand.

"You'll never get the dwarves out of their holes for Loghain."

Loren growled. "So we just wait and hope that the Archdemon gives us enough notice so we can get ready to kill it before it takes over everything?"

"This is your youth," Sten said. "There is nothing that can be done now. _Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam Qun._* We will have the time we have, kadan." And he left. Loren and Leliana stared after him.

"He's right, you know." Alistair spoke up. "The Wardens of other Blights couldn't have had any more tactical advantage than we do, and they won."

"Other Blights lasted centuries," Zevran said, without much misgiving. He took another swig.

"Only the one!" Alistair protested.

Morrigan spoke again from the back, looking straight at Loren. "For the dwarves, there has only been one."

Wynne ignored her: "The other Blights saw darkspawn on the surface for decades."

Alistair closed his fists in frustration. "If we let darkspawn on the surface for decades, Fereldan _will_ fall."

Leliana was still staring after the door that Sten had left open, her face grim, "Then it falls." Alistair turned to stare at her, his mouth agape. "We can't save everyone!" she protested, then switched to her most ringing bard's voice. "We can only throw our own lives before theirs, and hope that it is enough."

Loren could hear the rise and fall of a song in her lines. Alistair stood up quickly enough that his chair fell, knocking the small table with the open map of Fereldan on it. Zevran jumped forward to catch it, but the crash of Alistair's chair seemed to startle Leliana out of her dreamy look. He looked a little embarrassed at the noise he'd caused, but continued in an urgent whisper. "This isn't a damn song."

Loren held her hands out between her friend, who had tears in her eyes, and her fellow Warden, who was red in the face. Loren wondered why she'd never noticed how futile their struggle was, how ridiculous they were to believe they could end it themselves. How ridiculous to even believe they could stay alive until Loghain – if he lived – had to accept the presence of foreign troops. Blights felled countries, lasted decades. She looked at the trees inked into the Brecilan forest on the map of Fereldan. "We'll muster when we know where the Archdemon is, or when we're no longer at risk of losing our army to a civil war. It is what we can do. In the meantime, let's get people out of Fereldan."

Morrigan made no attempt to hide her disgust. "We're going to escort bands of peasants?"

Loren shrugged. "We could just keep the roads clear. Most are heading east and north, right? Let's focus on the Imperial Highway and the North Road."

"There's Chantry work here – " Leliana stabbed an area in the east of the Bannhorn, " – and here."

"Good," Loren caught Morrigan's expression and added, "we could use the coin. Anyone else with suggestions?"

"I suggest we start with the elves." Wynne raised a hand against Loren's opening mouth, "If for no other reason than to give them time to get their own civilians out." Loren felt a stab of embarrassment at this.

"I wish to return to Soldier's Peak." Morrigan stated flatly, without meeting Loren's eyes. Loren saw Alistair's raised eyebrow of alarm from where he stood by his fallen chair.

"I also have business at the Peak. We will stop there before the thaw – and the Landsmeet. Anyone else?"

When no one else spoke, Loren held her hands over the map in a clear gesture of dismissal, "Okay. Thank you all for your input." No one rose.

Zevran laughed out loud. "Who says it is lonely at the top? Our captain must have her audience now!" He stood and clapped a hand to Alistair's back. "Come, friend. There was a barrel – too large by far to carry – of something that I think you ought to try. It'll put hair on your chest."

Alistair looked at the elven man warily, "You sure? There's no hair on your chest."

"Your attention flatters me, but I assure you that I am not hairless for lack of trying."

Alistair shot a look again at each of the younger women – Leliana who would not meet his eyes, Morrigan who did with her chin high, and Loren, who smiled very slightly at him – and allowed himself to be guided out of room by the elven man. Loren watched the door swing shut after the retreating men with a stab of longing that had more to do with her stomach than with the barrel or the men who'd just left. Eamon's supper had been surprisingly skimpy, and her Warden guts gnawed. Cabel nosed the door open again and trotted smartly after the men.

Loren arranged her face in an expression of polite interest and turned back to the room. Wynne, Oghren, Leliana, and Morrigan all remained; Leliana's head was on Loren's pillow, her red hair stark on the white linen. She was tracing a finger down the open wine bottle's glass neck. Morrigan glanced uncomfortably at the room's other occupants and pushed her way past the dwarf with an expression of embarrassment. Wynne smiled, "Perhaps I too can wait for another time. Good night, my dear." And she left with an affectionate pat on Loren's arm.

Oghren shifted uncomfortably. "Does, ah, the Imperial Highway go by the docks at Lake Calenhad?"

* * *

A bottle later, Leliana lay across Loren's bed, slipping gently between sleep and waking. Loren sat on a nearby chair, her feet propped beside the bard. Loren slid a little further down the chair, pushing her cold toes a little closer to the warmth radiating off the other woman. She had wanted to talk about Marjolane, and had drank enough to wander off the second tale she'd told Loren. Loren had wondered if she could just tell Leliana that she didn't care what had happened, but she'd kept quiet and just let the bard talk while she sipped tentatively at the wine. Leliana was right – it had improved with airing. Loren had only had wine once before, when she and Tamlen had found a dead monk and his cart of barrels. That wine had pinched her cheeks and made her squench away. This wine was better. It slid over her mouth and seemed to glow in her otherwise empty belly. The bard had talked, thrown her arms around Loren at one point, and, finally, had gone quiet. Loren waited until the woman's breathing had grown slow and satisfied. Then she stood. The room shimmied and the stone floor pressed her cold feet painfully. Loren draped an extra blanket over her friend and left.

The Arl's castle seemed different at night. It was still with sleep and recent grief, and Loren met no one as she walked its corridors. The dimly lit corridors seemed to glow with privilege and new meaning and the lush carpets spread under Loren's steps. The pattern of them caught Loren's attention and she tried to follow the path of one swirling vine as it looped and wove through the red blooming roses. She turned a corner and walked into Sten.

"Kadan." He was standing before an enormous mural, his feet only inches from the wall, hands behind his back.

"What are you doing?" It came out more churlish that she'd intended and something inside her flinched. Of all people to run into after a bottle of wine and an hour of Leliana's crying, Sten would not have been her first choice.

He turned back the mural, "This is a masterpiece." Loren turned to look at it as well. Almond branches spread themselves over a blue sky. The tree was in bloom, and the white petals seemed to glimmer slightly in the torchlight. There was no trunk to the tree, but its branches spread the length of the wall. She cocked her head at it. "At first, the eye is drawn to the blooms, but the mastery is in the sky. See how the artist's brush has moved, seemingly at random? The paint was thick, already drying, when it hit the canvas; you can see the indent of each hair on the brush." Sten made no motion to point these out to Loren, and she squinted, bringing her face close to the wall. Each brush stroke was visible, as if the artist has carved more paint away from the stone wall, rather than applied paint to it. The blue paint of the sky was thicker than the paint of the branches and did not, as Loren would have assumed, follow their direction, but struck out in all directions, regardless of the branches. Sten spoke again, his voice full of admiration. "The artist was more interested in the sky, which is more permanent than the living things. This is very wise." Loren leaned further left to follow the sky as it swelled forward past the branches. She stretched too far, and for a fraction of a second, she felt the small interior flail of lost balance and twitched back to the left.

Sten, a warrior, was trained to notice these small lapses and turned full to face her. "You have been drinking with the bard." Loren was not one to stand down when challenged and turned to face his eyes. He spoke again, quickly, to remove all trace of accusation. "Your ways are not my own."

"The Qunari don't drink alcohol?"

"In my country, there are some men who do little else. They drink and write of the Qun." Sten turned his head in a gesture Loren recognized as the effort of translation: "No hangover will cure one like me," Sten made the slightest of pauses, "knowing as I do the aftertaste of all sweetness."

"Do all Qunari memorize poetry?"

"Yes. I have a question, if you will." Loren opened her arms in invitation. "What arts do the elven pursue?"

"Statues, mostly. We can leave them behind and return to them. They are mostly statues of our gods, so returning to them carries a special poignancy."

"In our chest at the Peak, you have placed elven boots which are adequate as both armour and art. This is no small achievement."

"That technique has been lost." Loren was not one of those elves who moaned ceaselessly about Arlathan. To her, Arlathan had never been a place to love or a even city she could look at, but a constant resentment that spread over the Dalish like snow. Loren knew that the chasm between where they were and where Arlathan might have been millennia ago was unbridgeable. The elves were spending the last of their generations in hiding. She touched the tattoo on her arm. The boots were beautiful and, if in a set, useful, but she would not carry them around with her for sentiment's sake. She was spending her time more fruitfully.

Sten nodded in silent acknowledgement.

* * *

Loren pushed the thick wood door of the larder open. She saw Alistair first, a half-empty glass of an amber liquid in front of him, and his hands pressed between his thighs, as if for warmth. Oghren was uncharacteristically inattentive to his drink, instead watching Zevran, who was leaning across the cold, picked-over carcass of a chicken and speaking in low tones to the other men.

Oghren's eyes flitted across to Loren, and the other elf twisted in his seat to meet her eyes. "My dear!" he cried, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "We are drinking to love and loss. Alistair here claims that he has none, though we all know better." Alistair shot a look of terror at Zevran before the elf continued, "During a Blight, we all stand to lose much." Alistair's panic receded for a moment before he caught sight of Loren and seemed to realize something. He blushed again. Zevran reached out and placed a calming hand on the templar's forearm. "As our loveliest bard would say, all Fereldan hangs in the balance, does it not?"

Loren felt the familiar sinking of futility. The Blight's inevitable progress was not that different from the slow decline of the elves. She shook it off. While she might have spent her whole life struggling against her Clansmen, she could fight the Blight alone if she had to. Fereldan might sink, but she need not despair over what she could not do differently. Alistair raised his eyes from across the table, and though she knew he was thinking of the Warden's grim odds and of looming kingship, she felt empathy tug between them. Their eyes met, his sunk in despondency. His powerlessness over his future was not the same as hers had been with the Dalish, and she would make him see it. She felt a swell of strength, her old friend, and knew it glowed from her.

Zevran looked from Alistair, who didn't notice, to Loren, who did. She dropped her eyes from the templar's. "Care to join us, my dearest Warden?"

She smiled at them. "Yes. Most definitely." Oghren slapped the table in enthusiastic approval and she stepped forward to the grins of her fellows: the elf, the man, and the dwarf.


	7. A Longer Reprieve

A/N

I am so sorry that this is 10+ days later that I promised. It's not even my fault! The chapter's been uploaded for days, but the site wasn't having it. I even tried making a new story, then a new account. No go. Then I learnt that there was a workaround. If you can't add chapters to your story, replace "properties" with "content" on the page where you get the message. Hurrah!

Thanks for your patience and for reading.

**This is Better: A Longer Reprieve**

* * *

Loren shot upright off the narrow bed with a gasp. Awareness surged from diaphragm to throat and her hand was halfway to her maul before she caught Morrigan's bemused expression, her weight on the bed, and the open palm hovering over the spot where her head had been resting.

"I hope your templar remembers to nudge your weapon well out of reach before he inflicts his affection on you." She returned her hand to her lap. "'Tis only I, curing your headache. No need for alarm." She rose roughly from the bed.

Still half-erect, Loren laid the back of her hand to her forehead, feeling the fading glimmer of Morrigan's healing spell. Morrigan's were spicier than Wynne's warm-bread glows. Loren felt the retreat of what was probably a pounding ache between her eyes. Her alarm faded.

"I'm sorry, Morrigan. You startled me."

"Obviously." Loren had the vague memory of several toasts, of being helped to Morrigan and Leliana's room by the surprisingly sober Zevran and of Alistair stumbling protectively behind them. Loren must have been staring at the other woman, because Morrigan crossed her arms in front of her scantily clad breasts. They pressed together. Her mouth turned to a slight smirk, "Better?"

"Much." The pain was gone now, and Loren was left with nothing worse than a cottony thickness in her mouth.

Morrigan raised an eyebrow and, without changing her tone, asked, "Why have you not asked me about my interest in Avernus?"

Loren shrugged. "I can trust you that far."

"But no further?"

"I trust you to not betray me. You'll tell me in time, I'm sure." Yellow eyes searched Loren's. The suggestion of a crease threatened between them, but Loren still thought they looked like they eyes of an animal. Had they always, or did a little of each beast stay in Morrigan each time she shifted? "Is it time?"

Her eyes dropped, and Morrigan looked completely human again. "I wish to show you something." She turned to her pack, leaning neatly against the wall. From it, Morrigan pulled a thickly bound book. She kept her body between it and Loren while she found the spot she wanted. When she turned, Loren recognized the brownish ink that Morrigan had brought from the Wilds, and Morrigan's close clean hand. "I copied this from the Shaperate when you had us look into Harrowmount and Bhelan." Morrigan handed Loren the book, but stayed near enough to snatch it back if Loren turned a page.

_Shalata Negat_

_5:12 Exalted_

_The surface declares the fourth Blight, a number that means nothing to the Stone. In the depths, the events are inverted, our Blight spanning the interim years. Seven generations of shifting lines and darkness. Our Ancestors are the reason the surface kingdoms don't know a darkspawn by sight, why even their eldest have never heard an accounting first-hand. They believe the Blights are defeated by a gathering of allies with singular focus. Eventually, they will be lost by attrition in the depths. The spawn surges and releases. We fortify and follow, although doubts are raised._

7_:0 Storm_

_The wars continue in the depths and the border thaigs are lost. Orzammar fortifies and holds, but the lost ground is not regained and remains dead space, where darkspawn multiply. It was a surge, but the surface was not breached, there was no great archdemon behind them. No Blight was declared, no rallying cry was given. The Wardens slumbered._

_After centuries of constant skirmishes, a trend becomes clear. The first line of defense, unacknowledged for centuries, weakens._

Loren closed the book, handed it back, and waited for the mage to elaborate. Morrigan traced a finger over its leather casing and spoke without looking at the Warden, "The dwarves cannot hold indefinitely. I predict that they will fall within two centuries." She glanced upwards, "Before the next Blight." That this was true should have been obvious to Loren from the state of the city, and of the roads she had walked with Alistair, Oghren, and the golem. Its truth, she thought, did not explain Morrigan's mention or Avenus's name in the same conversation, but Loren did not beg for information from anyone. Morrigan wordlessly opened her palm over the book. It glowed purple and Loren realized that she had sealed it. Morrigan shot at sharp look at Loren's continued silence. Standing, she spoke, "Thank you for your attention. I know your time is in short supply," and left the room.

Loren closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. It was too early for Morrigan. She rolled her head gently from side to side, then pressed her chin to her collarbone. Her spine stretched from neck to midway down her shoulder blades. She felt stiff, as if she had slept too long or too deeply. She wanted water. And a spar.

* * *

She was not the only one. Arl Eamon's men seemed to be taking the day off, but Oghren was already up and seemed to be trying to explain how to grip weapons to Sten, who looked ready to sink Asala into the dwarf's left eye-socket.

"There ya go! Feel that anger now!"

Sten's expression of rage changed to one of utter bewilderment.

Across the yard, Alistair and Bann Teagan were deep in conversation. She'd had enough of human nobility; Alistair could deal with the Bann himself. She turned to the rack of sparring weapons. Her Chasind Maul was too massive for use – even if she padded it with wool, it was too heavy to risk her companions with. Wynne wasn't cheerful about healing sparring wounds. Across the top of the rack were the two-handed weapons: a maul at the very top and a battered two-handed sword below it. She touched the edge of the sword and felt that it was sparring-dull, but straight. It looked as if it should have a fuller, but didn't. A training sword then: deliberately heavier than the real thing. Loren sighed. She much preferred swords – they were lighter and let her move more in combat, but she just hadn't found a sword better than the maul she'd bought off the dwarf in Denerim. It was a spectacular weapon, so she had no reason to complain. Still, she let her fingers linger on the blade a moment longer before she took the maul.

It was hefty, despite the thick cushioning around the head. "Arl Eamon, for all his hand-wringing, has excellent taste in training weapons," Zevran had appeared beside her, as he so often did, without her notice. Loren had long since stopped letting it bother her. It would be easier by far for him to slip her a blade in combat someday. "These are Antivan. The maul has a head of unworked osmium wrapped in wool, then in leather. Osmium is very dense. It allows the maul to retain its weight, despite the small head."

Loren placed her hands on the grip and tested its balance. It hung heavy, as all mauls did, but not so heavy that it felt unfriendly in her hands.

"These daggers, Antivan in design if not in origin, are also ideal sparring daggers: slightly shorter, as you don't wish to stick these nearly as far into your sparring partner as you do into your enemies. Usually, I prefer a dagger and a sword, but two daggers are easier to conceal, and fighting usefully with them is a good skill." He tossed one dagger into the air. It spun in the cold grey of the late autumn morning, rotating end over end and landed back in his hand. He raised an eyebrow at Loren, "May I have this dance, ser?"

His smile was half-bemused, half smirk and she bowed him into the dusty chalk circle on the ground, "After you."

The trick to being an interesting warrior with a heavy two-handed weapon was stillness. Sten saw his weapon as an extension of himself, and was as precise about striking with it as he would be at smashing his naked hand into an armoured ogre. He maneuvered Asala into the armour's weakest point, twisted the blade's tip and left cracked breastplates and tossed helmets behind him. Oghren embraced the handicap of the weapon's weight, throwing his whole body behind each blow, driving at his opponents like a wave that never receded and exhausting himself. Loren admired his dedication and his heedlessness, but she fought differently. She was slighter than both the men, and while she was as strong, she just didn't have the mass they did to maneuver her weapon.

Loren stayed as still as she could, trying to make her own body the trunk from which her maul swung. From here, she was indomitable. She stood with her legs apart, and her belly's weight tipping her hips back just slightly and bending her knees. From here, she was rooted. From this still spot, she could strike with force at whatever threw itself at her. She tested, again, the balance of the new weapon in her hands. Zevran watched her, and winked. She swung her maul at his hip. Unhindered by the same weight as she was, he turned on the spot to evade her.

Her maul finished its swing at nothing and her body compensated for the rapidly descending weight, refusing to be pulled down by it. Rather than reverse the weapon's swing, she redirected it to jab the handle's butt at the elf dancing away from her. It caught him in the right shoulder and he staggered backward, but didn't fall. She pulled it back again, over her head, in preparation to help it smash the figure before her, but suddenly her face was full of his back. He'd turned into the arc of her swing, absurdly safe inside her weapon's reach. Her arms were caught uselessly above her, and she was suddenly very aware of her stretched-out torso, her ribs, of the spaces between her ribs. Loren knew how dangerous it was to stand this close to an armed assassin, and sure enough, he spun into her. She tried to spin with him, to keep her body against his less-dangerous backside, but couldn't get her maul to spin with her. It dragged her arms behind her head and Zevran's blunt dagger pressed itself into the thin leather of her armour's armpit.

"Point," he claimed, his mouth inches from her face. She pushed him away angrily.

"Fine. But the fight would hardly have been over. It takes more than a dagger to down me."

"Don't be a sore loser, my dear. I know who won the only real fight between us."

Loren narrowed her eyes at his flattery, "Don't patronize me."

To his credit, he met her eyes square, "I would never. You will beat me in combat every time. But in dueling, you are too slow and too reliant on your one big hit."

"It works against darkspawn."

"Well, you're much smarter than darkspawn. And so, I flatter myself, am I. Not that I'd wish for it, but they'd be less monotonous if they showed some imagination. It will be quite embarrassing to fall to the most mindless enemy I've ever faced."

Loren found, with practice, that she did get better at predicting where Zevran would move to next. He still scored many more points on her than she did on him, but she kept a secret total in her head and knew she would have dropped him before he dropped her, even if he'd been using longswords. This gave her some measure of consolation. Having finished their own duel, Sten and Oghren were standing nearby and ignoring Bann Teagan completely. Alistair had simply sunk onto the nearest bench, looking pale.

"Had enough, bella?"

Loren was sprawled in the dirt, into which Zevran had unceremoniously tripped her. She felt a surge of irritation at his amused tone, but forced herself to keep her tone light, "Only to keep your morale up."

Zevran actually laughed at her, and she had to squelch the urge to smash his face. "I admire your tenacity, Loren. Most people don't stick around for such a beating."

Sten's stoic tone saved her from having to make her own response. "She beat you quite handily, elf."

He shrugged, "To each their own measure." He caught Loren's hand and made as if to raise it to his lips, but stopped halfway. The Antivan held it in the air as if her were congratulating her and thanked her before letting it drop.

Zevran and Oghren agreed that it was high time for dinner, and left with Sten. Bann Teagan was shifting his weight from foot to foot in the way that Loren now recognized as the desire to say something private, so she made some fuss replacing the training maul on the rack. Sten caught Loren's eyes, but she nodded him off to the castle. Teagan watched the three men close the castle doors behind them before he turned to Loren. "Thank you. Alistair said that you would be willing to speak to me." He stood rigidly, legs planted firmly in the hard ground. "You're right about not doing anything." He straightened, "If you'll take me, I'd like to help."

A thrill shot through the elf. Having a Bann with them would be enormously useful. She turned to Alistair, determined that he be treated as a leader along with her, "What do you think?" Teagan tilted his head at Alistair, without taking his eyes off Loren. She broke eye contact to watch the technically more senior Warden give his opinion.

Alistair raised an eyebrow at her, and when he spoke, his voice sounded thin. "Me? I think an extra normal person would be fabulous. I guess Wynne's pretty normal, actually."

"Wynne, the mage?" Teagan was incredulous.

Loren laughed. "Oh, you are in for a world of surprise, aren't you?" She offered her hand, having learnt the human gesture from Leliana, "Bann Teagan, your help would be much appreciated."

He took it and grinned at her. "When do we leave? I have some preparations to make and messages to send home."

"Is two days too soon?"

"Perfect." He saluted her and strode off. She'd have to tell him to not do that, but watched him stride back towards the castle. Alistair was entirely correct: having a human who wasn't a mage or an apostate or a grey warden would be useful. She could send Teagan ahead with the dog, and maybe Alistair as backup. If she wore a helmet, people might assume she was human . . . . Unless she spoke. Or showed her face.

Alistair interrupted her thoughts. "I thought you'd say yes. Hoped, really, that you weren't just partial to lunatics and criminals."

"You could have just told him yes, you know." She told the redhead as she turned to him. He was still slumped on the barrel, not having made a move to rise, with his face in his hands. "You okay?" Loren asked.

He grunted in response, then, after a moment, said, "Sparring. How can you even think of doing anything but sitting still?"

Loren chuckled, "Morrigan healed me."

Suddenly alert, he looked sharply at her, "Why?"

"She wanted to show me something and I guess she wanted my undivided attention."

"What?"

"How the dwarves are doomed."

"Hmm."

Loren smiled at him, "Here. I brought you something." He looked up with interest, but his face fell when she held out a small bottle.

"Loren! These are not for trivial use!"

She laughed, "You sound like Wynne. She saw me leaving the kitchens and knew right away that Morrigan had healed me." Loren took a disapproving tone, '"Magic is not for such mundane purposes.'"

"Well, it's not."

Loren amusement dried up, and she felt the bare heat of embarrassment. "Sorry."

He buried his face in his hands again. "I feel awful."

"I know. We do have lots of these, and Wynne was on her way to brew more." She held out the vial, but he didn't take it. "Zevran was drinking them all last night, you know."

"Really?"

"I saw him."

"That makes me feel a bit better."

"It makes you feel better that you're the only one who is suffering, and it's by choice?"

"You don't think that if we aren't going to use them, we could give them to someone who will?"

"Would you have thought of giving them away if you hadn't considered taking one now?"

Alistair opened his mouth, stopped, and closed it again. He turned his head to the side, "It still feels weird."

She stepped closer to him and set the vial on the barrel beside him. "I suppose it's good to know that humans are as hard on themselves as they are on everyone else." Alistair leaned his forehead into her torso. She hesitated, then placed her hand on his head. His hair was surprisingly soft under her fingers. She wondered why she hadn't noticed that before. She moved her fingers through it. "I'm hungry. Can I at least get you some bread?"

He turned his face up and she almost laughed at the extremity of the gratitude on his face. "Would you? I don't think I could stomach the kitchens."

"It is quite the favour, but I'll manage."

"And water?"

"And water. Anything else?"

"Bring yours too. I want to show you something."

Loren hesitated again, but threw caution away. She was pretty sure that Zevran had guessed already, knew that Wynne had. "Sure. Wait a minute."


	8. Rolling in Hay

A/N: This is a door-closed kind of chapter, if you know what I mean. ) I feel awfully nervous about posting this. Please let me know what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. I promise we'll return to the plot soon.

**A Longer Reprieve: Rolling in Hay**

* * *

The ex-templar thumbed the vial in his hand, watching Loren's . . . hindquarters as they disappeared up the stone steps of Redcliff Castle. They swayed invitingly. What he was thinking of doing was forbidden: a serious crime against the Chantry's teaching. The cork squeezed into the vial's thick glass was dry and it caught on his rough skin as he passed his thumb over its top. He pressed his lips together. He had no love of the Chantry and knew that their teaching against magic was arbitrary at best, and a blatant power grab at worst. Still, he was certain that the Maker did exist. He held the vial up. There was enough potion here to save a peasant from a fatal wound, and he was considering throwing it away on a hangover. Frivolous.

All day, he'd been fighting the urge to just go back to bed. He'd woken early, feeling uneasy in the castle he'd watched his whole boyhood. When he'd stood up, he'd thought for a wild moment that he'd been tainted. Then he remembered that he _was_ tainted, and couldn't come down with Blight sickness. He'd forced himself to dress and make his way outside. The cold had felt good on his skin and purged the scents from the air. He hoped Loren would bring back something bland from the kitchen.

Still, there was enough potion here to take the edge of his headache and still save a peasant from an almost-fatal wound. . . . He unstoppered it. As always, he felt the slight tug of arcane magic. This was one of Wynne's and had her glow on it. Well, there you go, he thought. If he hadn't insisted that Loren buy all that elfroot off the trader who'd sold them Shale's control rod, they wouldn't have so many healing potions anyways. It was like interest. Which was also against Chantry law, he remembered. Screw it, he thought, and he used his lips to suction half the bottle's tart liquid into his mouth. He restoppered it, and promised the Maker that he'd give it to the first needy family he passed. It was exactly the kind of bargaining with the Maker that the one earnest Sister at his Chantry had warned him against.

Loren reappeared at the castle's double doors, carrying two trenchers and a large canteen. He watched her turn her body to the side so she could see where the steps restarted. She was graceful, even when playing the crude bludgeoner against Zevran. He wondered why she'd chosen such an unwieldy style of fighting – even a two-handed sword relied more heavily on brute strength than on grace and finesse – when her physique so clearly called for something else. Her distaste at being beat by Zevran had been obvious, but Alistair was fine with her having an unpleasant experience while he was so consistently leering at her.

She did a dancing sort of two-beat gait down the stairs and caught his eye as she crossed the yard. She was still armoured, but bare-headed and -handed. Feeling much better, he shifted on his barrel so that he was leaning against the stone wall that his barrel line and grinned widely. She grinned back and his heart did a little dance.

"We're going to get teased for this later, you know."

He shrugged. "Zevran and Oghren already know. It's only a matter of time."

"Leliana, Morrigan, and Wynne all do as well." Loren looked concerned, but her next words were dismissive. "Wynne disapproves."

"Oh well. It was a secret that couldn't last forever. Keeping it was much less fun than I thought. I mean, I didn't think it was going to be fun, but I thought it would be less not-fun."

"A week is not forever." At times like this, Loren wished she had a helmet on. Or hair. Anything to hide behind.

"You do realize that we live, work, hunt, cook, eat, clean, pack, unpack, and sleep all within eyeshot of each other, right? Secrets are hard to come by."

"Apparently." Loren leaned her face over the trenchers. The meat in it was beef, which she had never had before joining the Wardens. Unseasoned, it had a tamed taste to it that she didn't like, but there were cloves and mint in this stew. It smelled good and the steam warmed her face. "I brought you one, just in case. I'll eat it if you don't."

"I really like that you eat."

Loren laughed. "I can see why you haven't found that one special woman yet. You are extremely picky."

He blushed. "No! I meant that I like that you, you know, really eat. You don't pick at things like Morrigan or Leliana. It's sexy." He reached out and touched the scales of her leggings with his fingers. Loren felt a spark of desire shoot up her thigh and she moved her leg outward, into his palm.

"So, where are you taking me?"

"Come on."

He stood up and led her around the corner of the castle to the barn doors and rolled the door aside. The stables were enormous. A thick carpet of straw lay over the stone floor, and the warm, full smell of animals filled the air. Alistair closed the door behind them. He'd come here earlier and felt struck by the urge to bring Loren here, but now he felt uncomfortable. "Are these the stables you slept in?"

"Yeah. They're not so bad, right?"

"No." Loren replied emphatically, her hands still full of the bread, slowly turning soggy with stew. Warmed by her apparent approval, Alistair took long steps down the aisle. Loren followed him.

Most of the stalls were empty, but Loren caught motion in a few of them. At the end of an aisle, Alistair swung a door open and stepped into a large room. Loren peered into it through the door frame. Rows of saddles lined one wall, each perched on a piece of rough wood. On the other wall, pairs of leather strips held metal bars hanging between them. Loren glanced at Alistair, who looked much happier here than he had in the castle. "It's quite the tack room. I saw one in Denerim once, but it was more crowded. This one is good because the pegs are far enough apart that you can clean and oil the leather right on them, and leave them hanging to dry." He reached out to touch one of the bridles and looked at his fingers frowningly as he pulled them away. Dust.

The exact quality of Alistair's relationship with Eamon suddenly became clear to Loren, not as he saw it, but as the Eamon must have.

"I think that turning me into a knight was Eamon's original plan," he shrugged, "But I fell off. A lot. No sense of balance."

Loren thought of all the times she'd seen hurlocks bounce of Alistair's shield while he rushed some darkspawan that was engaging Leliana or one of the mages. More often than not, balance was about the strength in the torso and upper legs. "No – your balance is excellent." He looked at her, surprised. "It's very like fighting. You have to know when to be still and when to push." He smiled ruefully and turned back to the rows of leather. She persisted, "Really. I could teach you." Loren had been an adequate Halla rider, but there was little call for it as a hunter.

"Mostly, I just cleaned tack and mucked stalls. It was all alright." Loren mastered her pity as she looked at him. "Come on. I want to show you something." He took one of the trenchers from her and closed the door firmly behind him. He led her to a ladder across the aisle from the tack room and gestured for her to precede him.

The hayloft was long and narrow and windowless. Loose hay was piled high up the walls. Loren knelt in on the patch of flattened hay where Alistair had laid earlier. It was warm, and the sweetness of the hay mingled with the raw animal smell from below them. It was like an aravel inside: dark and close and warm, but with none of the gut-swooping swaying. Alistair negotiated the steps as she had, one-handed, but didn't quite meet her eye as he shifted off the ladder and heaved it up after him.

Loren shifted further into the mound of hay to make room for him, trencher still in hand. "Is this where you slept?"

"Yep," he glanced about.

"It's wonderful."

Relief flooded him, "It is, isn't it? It's strange that I spent so many nights here, imagining the bedrooms in the castle, but last night, all I thought about was here."

"You've just been conditioned by a year in a tent." He smiled at her and she winked, "No, castles are cold and drafty. And lonely. Listen." Below them were the sounds of horses moving and chewing. One snorted a kind of resigned discontent; another rolled, hooves knocking lazily against the wood walls.

Alistair's heart swelled, "Yeah. I liked this part of the day best. At night, I had the stables to myself." Alistair was suddenly hungry and bit into the stew and bread. Turning her head slightly to the side, she ignored her renewed surge of hatred for Eamon and mimicked his devotion to dinner. Gravy swelled over the bread and onto her cheek. Alistair leaned over and rubbed the pad of his thumb over it. Her cheek was warm and, too quick to counter, it shifted under his touch, pulling thumb and offending stew into her mouth. Heat and wet: he felt the skin of his thumb catch and pull as she sucked the juice off it. He groaned and shifted his suddenly restless legs. "This isn't why I brought you here," he apologized.

"I know." He watched her torso, the gentle curve of her ribcage, the tuck of her waist, the spread of hips. Without thought, he laid a hand on her hip. She leaned into his space and moved her mouth closer to his. His jaw had already opened behind his lips when she stopped and purred, "I can stop, if you want." He smelled the tang of the stew's mint on her breath, growled, and flipped her over, his right thigh pushing between both of hers. Hay fell against his face and was brushed gently away as he closed the slight distance between their mouths. Her lips opened and he pressed his tongue between them, a thick, hungry slide. He pulled back, letting the inside of his lips drag on hers as he left them. Her eyes were half-lidded. She placed a hand on his face, fingers curling behind his skull and she arched her back, pushing her torso off the hay and into his. He pushed back against her, against the unyeielding scale of her armour. He ran his fingers along the raised edge along the bottom of her breastplate. It curved upward at the sides, making room for her hips.

"You really do like watching me eat."

He lowered his head so their cheeks were flush. Her skin was warm and soft and he turned into it. "I'd really like to take your armour off."

She could feel his jaw move as he spoke and felt her wet, swelling response. She pressed the back of her head into the hay, exposing her neck and sliding her skin past his nose. His mouth moved over the ridge of her jaw: teeth on skin, the slight wet of inner lips. "That would be lovely," she said, before he got much closer to her mouth.

This took slightly longer than usual. Loren was facing away from him when his hands crept from her back to cup one breast in each hand. He held them up, squeezing her flesh between thumb and fingers and his mouth closed over the lobe of her exposed ear.

She'd barely gotten his breastplate off him when he ran both hands into the top of her gambeson. She radiated heat inside it; she was always hot. He remembered, early in their trek down the Frostbacks, the two of them splitting firewood with a crude axe they'd found by the road. Everyone had been complaining of the cold, and Alistair had been doing the swinging, but he'd felt her heat each time she passed him to retrieve the split halves. He thought back to all the women he'd imagined in his templar days: their curves and their close wetness. Their folds opening. Never had he imagined their own pleasure, their bodies arching at his touch, moving under his hands. He pulled back to look at the side of her face. He saw her see him out of the corner of her eye and she smiled at him. He smiled lopsidedly and she turned in his arms and arranged her legs on either side of him. She sunk back into the hay, looking up at him invitingly.

She heard Alistair's breath catch – the suspension of inhalation – and felt his hands flutter uncertainly over her belly. Another pause. She pushed herself forward to encourage his touch. He leaned forward to catch her mouth again in a distracted kiss as he pushed one hand tentatively past the string hem of her leggings.

His fingers slid down the wiry grain of her hair, pressed flat by a day in leggings. Her hips shifted under him, opening. Suddenly uncertain, he eased the pressure of his hand, but let his fingers follow the curve of her part until he found a small, wet flap protruding from her lips. He squeezed it gently between his first two fingers and stretched it away from her. She groaned and closed her teeth on his bottom lip. The space between his closed eyes grew momentarily brighter and with an effort that was not unlike choking, he mastered the urge to shove every potentially protruding part of his body into her.

Loren felt his fingers squeeze her. It had been over a year since anyone had touched her like this and all her longing pressed her forward in a blind rush. She wanted him to move his fingers inside her, or to her clitoris. His jaw started to tighten against her. She closed her knees tighter around his hips, pulling him in. His thighs pressed against her lower buttocks and she slide herself up them, closer to his hand, pushing herself around the tip of his middle finger. It edged into her and curved reflexively. She felt the bubble of her moisture breach and its steady seeping through her and over his finger. She let go of his lips and whispered his name.

Alistair whimpered and moved his hand to close over the lower weight of her buttocks, "Loren, I've got to stop or I'm going to lose it."

She loosened the muscles of her torso, and her body relaxed back to the floor. She pulled her lips between her own teeth and tried to press her frustration away. Something of her struggle must have shown on her face, because he looked suddenly worried. "I'm sorry. I want to – I think I might be crazy, but I just can't." His eyes flickered at her, "Not yet."

Alistair felt the fabric of his gambeson shift and then Loren's hand, small and hot, on his lower back. "It's fine. You let me know." His body relaxed and he shifted himself so that he was laying half over her. His nose and mouth went to her throat and buried themselves there. Loren felt her tension ebb, almost as if she'd found her release by admitting it wouldn't come. She felt the warm glow usually reserved for post-coital moments and his weight felt good against her.

"Stay here with me tonight?" She murmured consent. His hand pushed its way back down her pants, and he curved his hand over her buttocks. "I love you, you know."

She snorted softly, brushing his hair flat against his head. "You're going to regret that."

"I doubt it."

* * *

It had gotten cold during the night, and Alistair had pulled hay over them. The barn door slammed open and Loren groped in the hay for the dagger she usually kept under her scale skirt. Sleepily, he fumbled a hand toward her and mumbled, "It's just the stable boys. Barn chores start early."

It was not stable boys, and it was still dark out. Loren heard the heavy steps of an armoured man, followed by the lighter, slower steps of an unarmoured one.

"Teagan!" Eamon's voice boomed with the same dismissive authority he used on Alistair. "You cannot go with the Wardens."

The tack room door opened across the aisle and below them, and Teagan's voice came from within it. His tone was more strained than Eamon's and his words clipped in the air, "Why not?"

Eamon sounded calm in the face of Teagan's cool dismissal. "Think of how it will look."

The door slammed shut and Loren had to strain to hear Teagan's voice as he neared Eamon again. "You plan to instate yourself as High Chancellor, don't you? So who cares if it looks like you're behind him? You are."

"But the boy doesn't require a show of loyalty," Eamon explained. Teagan snorted and Alistair tensed, entirely awake now.

"People are dying, Eamon. Warden Loren was right – the time for action is now."

"Loren?" Eamon had always been unemotional, even when Loren had told him of his wife's death. Now, disgust ran off his tone. "That elf who's got him wrapped around her finger? She knows as much about things as you do, the both of you hunting in the bush 'til now. She's using him to get power for herself and her Clan." He snorted, "She probably thinks she can be Chancellor. What a coup!"

There was a gentle flop as a saddle was placed on the animal's back. "Better her than you."

"She's sleeping with him, Teagan!" Eamon cut himself off and lowered his voice. A note of panic ran through it, "She's an elf! What if she gets pregnant? Everything –"

"Enough, Eamon. I've made up my mind."

There was a moment of silence before Eamon left. Teagan fussed for some time below them, then hooves rang rhythmically down the barn aisle and the door rolled shut. All was quiet again.


	9. Virginity Talks, but too much

A hook horse was used (with a pulley) to pull a hook full of loose hay to a second-story hayloft. They were generally placid, thick, draught horses.

**A Brief Reprieve: Virginity Talks, but too much**

* * *

Loren left for the kitchens alone that morning; Alistair had wanted to spend the day alone and had stalked off by himself in tight-lipped silence.

When Loren pushed the kitchen doors open, her companions were already at breakfast. Oghren exaggerated looking around her for Alistair, chuckling to himself. Leliana smiled, eyebrow raised, and opened her mouth. Loren held a hand out, "First smart comment gets you fed to darkspawn. I kid you not." Leliana closed her mouth and exchanged smug looks with Zevran. Morrigan looked pensive and Sten uninterested. Loren sat down beside him.

There was really nothing to do that day. Teagan was gone, but even if he hadn't been, Loren did not want to jeopardize his good will by cutting his preparation time short. Zevran and the mages continued to occupy the kitchens, mixing components. Shale and Sten left together and Oghren took Cabel himself off to help Eamon's men train. He was surprisingly good at it, and the men liked him. Loren took Leliana to pick up their repairs in the village, only to find that they would not be done until the afternoon. Leliana looked shyly at Loren, "Tavern?"

"I've had enough drinking for a while yet, thanks."

"Hunt? We could repay the Arl for our stay."

The thought of a hunt soothed her, and while she had no intention of repaying the Arl, the fresh meat could be traded for cured. "Yes. Let's do that."

Loren found an old tree stand not too far from a boundary between forest and small farmhold. She and Leliana climbed up and Loren pointed at a small path. "They'll come through there before the sun goes down. We'll have a close, clear shot." She sat down to wait and swung Leliana's spare bow off her shoulder to test the tension. It was a longbow, but loosely strung. She would have to have a very close shot indeed if she didn't want to spend the evening tracking a wounded beast. She thought of Alistair's strained face when she'd left him in the morning and wondered if that was the only action she was going to get that evening anyways. She shifted her hips, the frustration she'd let go of the previous night seemed to have simply deferred itself to the morning, rather than evaporated. She was well pleased with their evening, and more than pleased with having overhead Eamon. Nothing she could ever have said to Alistair could have had equal effect.

"So..." Leliana started. The elf raised an eyebrow. "Where were you last night? I heard the Arl sending servants everywhere to find you both."

"The hayloft."

"The hayloft?" Leliana was supremely disappointed. "In hay? I thought maybe the village."

"It's where he slept as a boy."

"Oh."

Loren let her mind slip into the timeless blank of waiting. When Leliana spoke again, it startled Loren enough that she did not notice the slight strain in the woman's voice. "You must mean something to him." Loren shrugged. The bard looked away, into the forest off her side of the stand, before continuing, "And to you? He will be king, if Eamon has his way."

Loren snorted, "Alistair will be king if he wants it, or thinks Fereldan needs it. Eamon's beside the point."

Leliana did not speak again, but as the morning turned to afternoon, Loren's mind would not settle back into silence. She squashed the urge to keep talking to the bard. One shouldn't talk while on the hunt.

* * *

The women found a man happy to trade cured and butchered buck for their gutted doe. After the deal was done, the man admitted that the buck had been shot in the rut, but he had traded them pound for pound. Loren passed packages to her companions over dinner. Zevran, with a pointed look at Eamon over his thin stew, opened his right away and dropped several strips to stir into his meal. Oghren was chortling with laughter and thumping the elf on the back when Teagan and Alistair entered the hall together. Alistair strode with more poise that Loren would have expected past Eamon's head table, his head turned in smiling conversation to Teagan.

Eamon stood, "Alistiar. Teagan," he gestured at the two chairs standing empty on his right. "Join me." The rest of the table had been filled with Eamon's captains. Loren had not been invited.

Alistair inclined his head at his old guardian and spoke clearly and loudly, "Thanks, Eamon, but I'll eat with my companions. We ride out tomorrow." And, before Eamon could speak again, Alistair turned from him. Loren watched the Arl's face cloud, and his eyes flicked to hers. She let her gaze slide from him as if over a wall. Alistair's speech had none of the ringing political impact that Loren had come to expect from humans or dwarves, but he had made himself understood, simply and without flourish. Like an elf, she thought to herself, with satisfaction. Leliana looked curiously at him, and Morrigan and Zevran exchanged mildly approving glances. Loren passed the two human men their share of dried venison and let the conversation returned to practical matters. When Loren stood to leave, Alistair inclined his head slightly in the direction of the stables and Loren made a small smile of agreement.

Tonight, the stalls were all full. Loren stood outside the stall of an enormous dark bay gelding. His dark eyes flicked from elf to hay and blinked slowly under his forelock. His legs widened in long feathers that covered dark hooves. A wide white blaze stopped just short of the ridge around his eye. Loren could see why humans bound horses like they did; they were studier and stronger than the thin Halla, but for all this creature's size and strength, he had a complacent, dogged look about him. Loren thought of all the walking she and her companions had done, and how often she'd wished for a Halla. Not that a Halla could have taken her exactly where she'd needed to go. Her life had become so pointed. She thought of the horse they'd found tethered to the dead monk's wagon of bad wine. It had been a poor beast, but far more placid and easier to point in a specific direction than the Halla. No one else in her Clan had been interested in taking responsibility for the direction they travelled in, but Loren had reveled in the sensation of being able to move exactly where she wanted to go.

The barn door rolled open again and a horse further down the aisle nickered. Loren heard Alistair's long steps as he moved to her. "Teagan's got us horses," he explained. "All the horses he could get his hands on. We'll be more noticeable, which is politically good." He stopped short of her and looked inside the stall. He smiled at the gelding, "This one's mine. I remember his dam, actually; she was our hook horse for years. I liked her. Eamon bred her with a war stud for Connor."

"He's very kingly."

"He's very docile," Alistair's tone indicated that this was clearly the larger concern. He placed a hand on Loren's shoulder and pressed her slightly. She let him maneuver her down the aisle, stopping outside the stall of a small chestnut mare. "This one's barely broke. Teagan worried, as she's too small to carry him. Zevran is busy convincing Teagan that he can handle her."

Loren looked inside the stall - the mare was unremarkable beside the other, flashier horses, but she returned Loren's gaze evenly, with an intelligent looking flick of her ear. Loren felt a flash of excited delight, "Mine."

Alistair laughed, "Thought so." And he bent to kiss her, looping an arm loosely about her hips. The kiss was lingering and without the urgency of the previous night. He broke the kiss without straightening away from her, smiling close to her mouth.

"You seem good."

He let her go and reached a hand through the bars to scratch at the mare's ear. She stepped quickly to the back of her stall, rolling her eyes at him. He left his hand outstretched, and she slowly reached to sniff at it. The mare snorted at his hand before returning to her hay, but she did not re-enter the circle of his reach. Her face was featureless, baldly brown.

"I feel like I spent all this energy trying to justify what Eamon did. Now I don't have to. It's nice." He pulled his hand back from the stall, "Did I tell you that he finally gave in to Isolde only months after the Landsmeet confirmed Cailen heir?"

Loren shook her head. "That's a pretty damning detail."

"Yeah," and, for the first time, Loren caught the more permanent resignation of an adult in his face. She felt sadness like a trapdoor opening inside her and a rising pride at the same time. "I suppose you told me," he said as he reached for a rag hanging on the stall door and wiped his hands. He both wanted and didn't want to tell Loren that he'd actually spent the day thinking about Duncan's fight to conscript him and how he just left Loren's friend to die of the Taint. He shook his head at his own thoughts and replaced the towel. He'd never know.

Loren gave him several minutes to say more, but he didn't. She slid the young mare's door open and entered the stall. The horse watched Loren warily. Loren squatted and held out her hand low to the ground, letting the mare take her time. Finally, she edged close enough that Loren could stroke her nose with a single finger. The mare let her, then moved closer to the squatting elf. Loren scratched her forehead and the mare leaned into it. "This is very generous of Teagan."

"Yes." His agreement was emphatic. Loren glanced at him, but his expression had none of the uncompromising allegiance she'd seen in Ostagar when she'd said, entirely without the intention to offend, that Duncan must have thought his skills would be useful. He knocked his knuckles twice against the stall wall, hard and loud. The mare struck out with a hind leg.

"Sorry."

She shook her head, "It's fine." Alistair was still again and Loren reached out to stroke the mare's neck. The coat was soft and dusty. Loren stepped out of the stall and slid the door softly closed. "Do you want to be alone tonight?"

He blinked his surprise at her, "No."

"You sure?"

"Yes," he reached out and grabbed her hand. "I really liked being here with you."

"Me too," she twisted her hand so that they were holding each others'. "We don't have to do anything, you know. We could just – be here."

"Are you kidding? I can't be within five feet of you and not want you. If you don't want to get molested tonight, you'd better say so right now."

"Oh goody. I was hoping to get molested."

Once again, she preceded him into the hayloft. He'd barely gotten himself off the ladder when he reached for the buckles of her armour. She felt them tighten briefly before letting go, and Alistair's arms snaked inside the mouldings that held her breasts. The armour's shell fell from her body and she caught it as he cupped breast in each hand. She laid her breastplate carefully aside, then grabbed the hands holding her and squeezed. Breasts swelled up and she let him knead her before holding his hands still.

His hands whipped off her body, "I'm sorry!"

"No!" she spun around and looked into his face. "No, I just meant that if we're going to play all night," his eyes dropped, so she softened her tone, "which is more than fine, then the advantage has got to shift." She waved a hand at his armour. "Take everything off."

He did. Loren had seen him naked before, at the mountaintop where they'd found the Urn, but she hadn't taken the opportunity to look at him. He shimmied out of the trousers, but held them in front of him and hunched away from her eyes. She removed her own padding and underclothes, leaning past him to lay it on her armour. Loren had always been comfortable in her body. She had relied on it every day of her life – first, hunting with Tamlen in the Forest, and as a Grey Warden defending herself and her country. She had long ago stopped thinking about it from the outside; she didn't imagine how it looked, but experienced it solely as interior awareness: what contracted to move her like this, what it needed to stay warm and healthy, what it felt like to slip a finger here, or there. Her arms were strong and lean; her breasts were large and had never really stood out from her torso, laying instead against it. Her stomach rounded out between her two hips, which flared wide. Her thighs were thickly muscled from hours of maul swinging. They creased where they met her body. She felt Alistair's eyes on her, shyly, and she reveled in it.

She reached out to take his rolled up gambeson from his hand, but when he didn't immediately let it go, she waited. His eyes focused on some point over her right shoulder. "Alistair," she said, leaning forward and taking his chin with the fingers of her other hand. "Look at me."

His heart flailed wildly at the thought of looking her in the eyes, but he squashed the urge to flee and raised them. "Hey," she said. "It's just me." His eyes met the grey of hers. There was a band of darker grey around the edge of her iris and flecks of green that reached for her pupil. She moved to him and he watched her mouth as it came closer. The kiss was chaste, despite their nakedness. She tightened her lips only after they met his, pressing against his mouth. Her lips were warm; how was she always warmer than he was? The ball of fabric was taken gently from his hands, then warm fingers rested on his shoulder, pressing him backwards. For a fraction of a moment, he resisted her, then he gave in and laid against the hay. It was waxy under his skin and he closed his eyes.

His collarbone spread like bird's wings to well-muscled shoulders. A scar ran from bicep to elbow along the inside of his shield arm. Loren had seen it happen; he'd swung his shield into one genlock while another reached out with its crumbling short sword and slipped it between the scale plates on his arm. Wynne had been trying to revive Sten and hadn't gotten to Alistair in time to avoid the scar. It was a long, puckered mouth, uneven and leering. Loren leaned forward and put her mouth on it. The ridges on either side felt stiff, like cartilage. He made no reaction to her lip's gentle pull. "Can you feel that?" she asked him.

"Not really. I can feel that you are there, but not what you're doing." She replaced her mouth with her hand, letting it cup the muscle of his arm. It tensed under her touch and she ran it to his shoulder. She sat up again, hands on either pectoral muscle. She rested one finger alongside one nipple, and her other hand ran down the rolling creases of his ribs.

He reached out for her and grasped her arms, pulling her in. Their hips met first, his erection pressing into her soft belly. He gasped and grasped her arms tighter, curving his torso towards her. She continued to lean into him, her breasts pressing against the muscles of his chest. "Maker, you feel so good," he breathed and wrapped his arms around her.

His embrace pulled her further up and the friction of their bodies pulled the skin of his penis higher. He inhaled against her neck, "Don't move for a minute, okay?"

She lowered one ear to her shoulder, exposing more of her neck to his mouth. Obediently, he closed his lips around a piece of her skin. His mouth was hot and wet and as he slid his mouth over her, his breath hit the moisture of her neck. She shifted her hips away from him and reached between them, running her palm down the length of his penis. He was big. Very big. She wrapped her fingers around him, deliberate and light. She thought of the women who'd been jumped in the Forest just weeks before Duncan had arrived. Her whole Clan had been aghast at the unusual cruelty of their injuries, but holding Alistair, she could see that they probably hadn't been that unusual at all. Her hips tilted in unconscious anticipation and she felt a thrill of shame.

He let her neck go. "Loren," he croaked, "I want to have you."

A lightness seemed to fill her belly. She continued the slow, light press of skin until the tips of her fingers met the loose curls of his testicles and she curved her fingers around their curve, lifting and cradling. She felt his feet rubbing against each other in his eagerness.

"And I want nothing more than to take you, dearest. But the first rule of taking virginity is to not let the other person agree to it after you're holding their genitals in your hand." She gave them a gentle squeeze.

His hands ran the length of her body and cupped her buttocks, lifting and kneading them all at once. She felt her lips shift wetly, then slide wetly. Then he pull her over himself.

He could feel the hot wet of her, felt himself push into her lips. He raised his hips off the floor towards her and it burrowed further into her folds, parallel to the angle of her body. "You're very sure?" he asked, biting the skin of her neck as he spoke. The skin of his face was on her neck.

Loren's hips rose until the bottom edge of his head was slick with her. She stopped. All she had to do was arch her hips and and sink onto him. She was swollen and slick, aching for the hard push of a man. She wanted it hard and rough. She slid herself back down, leaving a trail of her desire over him, letting her clit slide over the wetness she was sliding over him. It wasn't worth it. "I'm sure, love. But if you feel the same tomorrow, I'm all yours."

He laid back and pulled her forward onto the flat plain of his belly. She could feel his head nestled between the checks of her ass. It felt friendly. His hands moved to grip her thighs, then moved restlessly to cup her breasts. They spilled, again, over his fingers. He let them go, and they fell. His fingers brushed over both nipples and she snarled in frustration.

"I know that this is one of those things you're never supposed to say to women who have just refused to have sex with you, but I really feel like I'm going to explode."

She smiled, "Well, there's no need for that." She reached behind her and took him again her hand. He was still slick with her. She turned over, so that her ass was spread before him. There was too great a difference in their heights for him to comfortably fit his mouth on her, but he reached out and placed his thumb along her opening. She pressed into it and it sunk deeper, but not inside. She opened her mouth and took his head inside it. He was sweet with her, sweet with his own pre-release, and his skin was stretched tight over the round tip. He rocked his hips, pushing further inside her. She let him, felt the hard ridge of his head catch and push past the seal of her lips.

"Oh, fuck. Loren. Maker."

She put her hand on him for a third time. She moved it up as she raised her head, so that the skin stretched over the lower half of him. She paused at the height of the stroke, then pushed mouth and hand back down.

His other hand joined his first on her buttocks and he spread her open before him. His thumb moved from one side of her to the other. He wanted to shove himself inside her, push her into the wall, the floor, the wood pillar holding the roof up, but he didn't. Her mouth started down on him again, and her hand. He stretched himself from chin to toes, pushing upwards to the feeling of inevitability that rose from his groin.

"Loren!" he cried, alarmed, grasping at her name against the almost-panic that threatened him. She reached forward and laid a quiet hand on the inside of his thigh. The panic pulled him under, and then, it wasn't so terrifying.

Loren felt the skin shift and tighten as he grew larger in her mouth. He brushed again against the circle of her and then she felt the hot pulse of fluid rising from his base past her lips. She stilled her mouth and held him in her as he cried out. He pushed on her ass as he came, forcing her mouth further around him, then he, too, went still. His erection eased in her mouth and she sucked out the last drops as she pulled away and swallowed. He reached down for her, grasped, and manhandled her until she was laying alongside him on the hay. He pushed one thigh between hers, and pressed his nose into the soft cleft below her earlobe. "I really, really love you, you know."

She shifted so that she could feel the hairs of his thigh tickling against her arousal. "The second rule of taking people's virginity is that you never believe anything they say after orgasms."

He shrugged and tightened his arms around her, apparently for a long rest. "Your loss, then."

Loren's excitement was still crashing in her belly, but she let him hold her, let him rest in the release she'd found for him.

"You know what I think?" Alistair sounded content, but awake.

"Hmmm?"

"That they just drug templars with lyrium so they don't spend all day chasing mages."

She shifted her head against his. "Would the mages would let them? I got the impression that they don't care for templars."

He closed the gap between her neck and his nose again. "Mages feel differently about sex. It was always a problem: templar initiates getting caught in their beds. I just figured that those urges wore off or got weeded out, but maybe it has something to do with the lyrium as well." When Loren said nothing, he asked, "What do you think?"

"Honestly, Alistair, I'm too horny to think about anything." He raised himself onto one arm and bent to kiss her long and deep. He could taste himself on her – thick and cucumbery. She opened her thighs and pressed herself against him. He could feel her wetness on his thigh and pressed his body to hers. Her arms went around his neck and she clung to him.

He pulled back, gently and slowly, and laid a hand on the straw beside her. "Show me." Loren smiled at him and rolled over so her back was pressed to him. He lowered his head to her shoulder and kissed it.

"Give me your hand." He pressed it along her belly and she placed her own palm over it, leading it down. His middle finger sunk into the valley between her lips. She pressed the tip of it into her and he sank it further in. Her upper knee lifted to give him freer access. Then she showed him how everything else worked.


	10. A Place to Stand

**This is Better: A Place to Stand**

* * *

The horses made them more impressive, and they covered more ground in a day, but they definitely did not mean the group had less to do. Alistair exceeded even Teagan's particularity when it came to the care of the beasts. Loren remembered the scanty care her Clan's adopted horse had received and thought, privately, that all the grooming and cleaning was entirely unnecessary, but she toed Alistair's line, gratified to see him take charge, if nothing else.

Zevran was an experienced horseman, so he backed the tall racer and sat through all its skittishness. He also coached Loren, who learned to sit hard into all the mare's resistances. If she stayed consistent in the saddle, the mare moved consistently under it. A week out of Redcliffe Castle saw the elf driving her seatbones into the saddle to encourage the mare to use her back legs to step under herself with a bit more gusto. The flush of it ran into Loren's cold-pinched cheeks; the mare's barrel seemed to swell between her legs.

Teagan coached Alistair, who did have good balance and was improving. Sten and Morrigan flat out refused to mount anything and kept up on foot: Morrigan in wolf form, and Sten by demonstrating some impressive feats of endurance. Despite his refusal to ride, Sten proved a keen disciple of horsemanship and tended the two packhorses as well as Leliana's gelding, who was well-cooed and drastically underbrushed. Cabel seemed pleased to run alongside the horses; Shale did not.

There was also the matter of feed. The snow was still thin and the horses could forage through it, but Loren could feel the heaviness of the winter to come in the briskness of the air and the early flocks of geese. More snow would slow the refugees down, but not darkspawn. Her party would travel easier on the horses' long legs than they would without, but soon they'd have to stable each night. Most of her companions were thrilled, but Loren worried over the cost. She'd rather spend it on troops.

"In a way, you are," Teagan told her one night while they sliced root vegetables. "Fereldan's nobility is usually generous only in their spoken support, but the nobles will be more likely to support you like this, and more generous when they do. You can funnel that support to your other allies."

Loren nodded, unconvinced and glanced across camp at Morrigan pouring over her leather tome by her own fire. Morrigan raised her eyes under Loren's scrutiny and met the Warden's gaze. One eyebrow and a corner of her mouth was raised in what Loren recognized as a smile. Loren raised an eyebrow back and the mage turned back to her tome.

Alistair's gauntlet fell on her shoulder. "Can I help, my dear?"

"We're just done," Teagan answered for her. "Oghren's cooking tonight, but Wynne's been kind enough to offer to supervise. You two go do your thing and I'll grain the horses."

The two Wardens did a perimeter walk each night, feeling for the darkspawn. It wasn't fool-proof, but they'd caught the faint glimmer of approaching groups often enough to make it worthwhile. When they got back, the rogues rung the camp with traps.

Alistair looked at Loren for confirmation and she nodded, handing her tray of carrots to Teagan, who placed them by the potatoes he'd peeled. Alistair waited for her to precede him away from camp. "Do try and keep your eyes on the path," Morrigan told them as they passed her tent. Alistair blushed, but Loren just waved at the witch. Cabel barked from across camp and bounded to join them.

Loren still found it soothing to be being away from the general bustle and chatter. In their understanding, Alistair had grown less loquacious in general and much less so with her. They picked their way through the dense trees. They were ringing Lake Calenhad on its west bank, staying as close to the shore as they could in an effort to keep their altitude low. Higher on the Frostback's slopes, the trees grew sparse, but close to the lake, they grew thick and tall, blocking the last of the evening sun. The air was still and was reasonably warm. Light lingered on the water past the trees' shadow. A hawk cried, but Loren could not find it in the sky. There must be fish in the water, she thought, and wondered if any of their company knew how to net or cast for them. She'd have to ask tonight. Fish would be a nice change. Loren reached a hand out to brush the edges of the trees' branches. Each soft needle scraped separately on her skin.

"I wish Teagan wouldn't do that." Alistair's voice startled her back to herself.

"Do what?"

"Order you about."

Loren shrugged, "I don't mind." Alistair was silent, so Loren spoke again, "I like being in charge of big, important things. You know: who gets to be the next dwarven king. Whether the Circle stands or falls. Who should live or die." She turned her face to wink at him, "I'm super qualified for those sorts of decisions." He smiled back as she continued, "What I don't like being in charge of is boring things, like when we should make our patrol, or which sword should go to who." Thankfully, Sten and Oghren had made a game of who could assign weapons most efficiently. Last night, the two had caught Alistair in their argument about rune slots over inherent properties. "Or whether Leliana picked out her horse's feet. Thanks for that, by the way."

"I suppose those are different kinds of duties."

"No wonder you don't want to be King. Delegate, my friend." Pleased with herself, she grinned happily at Alistair, who was staring intently away from her, across the lake.

She stopped abruptly and felt out, beyond the edges of her vision. There was only Alistair's low thrum, and no taint of darkspawn. "Alistair?"

"Nothing."

She turned back to continue their patrol. This was the point in the conversation where her adoptive mother, Ashalle, would have continued to press, to find out what was wrong. She had had an earnestness about her than Loren could fake when she needed something, but after the conversation was over, Loren always felt far away from the person she'd been talking to. Pleased with herself, but profoundly distant. It had not gone well when she tried to use it on Alistair the one time their conversation had strayed near Loghain. The memory of it left her aching, like a tooth had been pulled from some inner mouth. Recently, he'd lightly made fun of her about it, and she'd ignored the missing-tooth sore spot and laughed along with him. When Ashalle had pressed her, Loren had always felt warmed by it. Loren was exceptionally good at getting people to do what she wanted, which had its uses, even if they often ended up resenting her for it.

Alistair reached out with his sword hand and plucked at the end of a branch. It broke at the edge of the summer's growth: the softer green that had thumbed itself out of the winter-weathered older growth. He started stripping the needles away, and they fell noiselessly into the soft snow. As far as Loren could reach, there was no buzz of the darkspawn, only Alistair's friendly hum behind her. The white wilds stretched silent around them. "Circle around now?"

Alistair nodded and she turned left, into the trees.

* * *

Their tent still smelt of sex. Alistair had indeed wanted Loren the day after their last night in Redcliffe, and they'd spent several eventful evenings working their tension off. Between that, and their much-noticed absences in Redcliffe, there had been no point in maintaining the facade of secrecy and Alistair hadn't even bothered to set up his own tent since. He had not spoken again for the remainder of the patrol, and Loren had felt the silence ripping between them.

She spent a blissfully silent watch with Sten. It was on watch together when Loren most deeply appreciated Sten's discipline as a warrior: his ability to stand still and silent through long hours. She'd told him so once, on their way to Orzammar. His response still came to her in a blush of self-congratulation: "Your observation confirms my appreciation of yours." He had not smiled when he said it, and she had not smiled back. It had been perfect. She had not told Sten that what she appreciated about his silence was the way it lay, like a blanket, over the restlessness of her own mind and soothed it to its own stillness. The fire flickered over his unchanging face, giving it the illusion of movement as he stared into the trees. She sunk slowly into the deep well of patience that she found every single time she remembered to look for it.

Alistair stirred when she pulled the tent flap back. Loren had woke Wynne, who had unbuckled Loren's breastplate. The elf had held it to her body as she crossed the camp back to her tent. Once inside, she let it fall off her body, and laid it carefully to the side. Gauntlets, greaves, and leggings followed, as silently as she could. Her whole body seemed attuned to Alistair's in the dark, and she resisted the urge to press herself against him.

Alistair had heard her come in, heard her undress carefully in the close quarters of their tent. The future was pressing on him and kept him from speaking to her. He listened to her maneuvering

herself into the bedroll beside his and waited for her silence before he turned to her. The fire was on his side, and it glowed through the tent's thin wall, illuminating the high cheekbones and long stretch of her forehead. Her eyes were open. He detangled an arm from his roll and reached out to touch the arc of her tattoo. His finger traced it from the center of her eyes over her left eyebrow and down to her cheek. She leaned her face into his hand. He pulled her to him and her arms wrapped around him. He kissed her forehead, then laid the flat of his check against it. Her skin was warm, despite her just having come in from the cold.

Loren felt an unhitching somewhere within her and she struggled against the pull of her bedroll to move closer to him. His arms – longer and stronger than any elf's – folded about her, and she rested, feeling safe, and not resenting it.

He remembered following her out into the forest on their way to Haven from Denerim: her bare feet in the moss and her barely contained regret that he'd found her. He remembered kissing her outside the temple in Haven, her flippant enthusiasm, and the current of desire that had drowned him. It hadn't been the physical impulse that had alarmed him – he was used to the roil of lust in his belly and had even been enjoying letting the constant proximity of the elf and the beautiful bard tease him, letting lust batter at his concentration while he walked, while he tried to slow his mind to the calm cool of templar training. It had been the impulse to cover her with his body, to shield her not only from the darkness spreading over Fereldan, but from the eyes of other men and the world that was likely to pull them apart that scared him.

"I admire your independence, you know."

She shook her head. "_Vir Adahlen_. It's a failing."

He felt the urge to smooth hair away from her face, to somehow make her see him better, or him her. But her face shone in the dim light, as bare and open as it always was. He ran a hand over her skin, palm on scalp. Goldana, Eamon, Isolde all flitted in front of his face, but with much less power now than they ever had before. More clearly, he remembered how he'd turned himself in knots for them, the constant anxiety of stepping wrong.

"Are we going to search out the Dalish soon?"

The time had long come, Loren knew. Wynne's suggestion that they go immediately after Redcliffe had been a good one, but as soon as they'd set out, they'd heard about darkspawn to the north. Then further north. Then it had simply made sense to keep travelling northward around Lake Calenhad, so they were still weeks from the Forest. Loren still didn't want to go, but she squashed the unease in her response, "Yes. Teagan says he can lead us through the Bannorn. It will be quicker, and cheaper, since he can claim lodging along the way. Also, it will let many of the Banns have a look at you. And me, he says, as the de-facto Warden Commander in Fereldan. He says it will help in the spring."

She tapped his chest impatiently with a forefinger. She knew she couldn't let her lover come with her to meet them. The only thing worse than a human leading Fereldan against a Blight would be a shemlan-lover doing so. More specifically, a female shemlan lover. There were not so many elves that women bearing human babies was kindly observed, despite, or especially because of, the better life it often offered the woman in question. And she had failed to produce any offspring so far, a comment that was likely to come up, even with the Blight at hand.

Alistair covered her tapping finger with his hand, "How sure of you of their help?"

"Because I ask: completely. I am elven," she raised her chin. "I am my father's daughter and they respect the Wardens."

"If we survive, will you go back to them?"

"No," the finality in her voice was certain.

"Why?"

Loren thought of deer falling in the snow, her and Tamlen slicing through the thick membrane of the belly, of tying intestines off and leaving them in the spreading red for the wolves. She thought of the food wrapped in the broad maple leaves: how after the rare freezes, it thawed spicier than it'd been before. She remembered Ilen reciting the story of Arlathan, the mindless nodding heads chanting the chorus in unison. She thought of her sickness as a girl in the lurching aravels. She thought of the meeting her friend Awarin had taken her to when her Clan had gathered with the others. It had consisted entirely of young elves, mostly men, who wanted land: all the land, Arlathan restored, immortality regained. She had only gone the once; their frothing anger seemed no less shortsighted and no more useful than the Keepers' patience. "I want to be in the world that's here in the time I'm here."

* * *

Flies swarmed. The black buzz of them loomed, but when Loren turned her head, she couldn't see them. Just hear them, the thin armour of their bodies and crisp transparency of the wings. Then she knew that Alistair was near and she opened his mouth to say his name. Flies swarmed out of her mouth and now she could feel the thousand moving bodies in her mouth and in her throat. She was on her knees, hands trying to cover the hole of her mouth, and still they came out of her. She heard Alistair calling her name in alarm, but she when opened her eyes, all she saw was Morrigan. The swarm took her shape, buzzing black and brittle. Her eyelashes were wings and her breasts were shining and writhing, and growing bigger and fuller with each breath that she took. Loren groped for Alistair, whose taint she could still feel nearby.

"Loren! Loren! Wake up!" His voice came from far away, alarmed and gruff. She rolled to him, but he was on his knees, pushing his head into his gambeson. "Darkspawn! Zevran's traps went off and I can feel more under the ground. They're coming!" Loren felt small and shaken, still in the terror of the dream. "Wynne's on watch, so she's armoured, thank Andraste. Hopefully she can keep the rest of us alive."

What was happening dawned on Loren with all the suddenness of cold water. She groped for her maul; it was outside the tent. She was naked. Gambeson. The tent flapped closed and Alistair was gone. She cast around for something to cover herself.

Her maul had been knocked aside and was laying in the muddy snow behind Sten and a hurlock. To her left, Loren heard the shrieks and Cabel's tight growl. She scanned the campsite in the fire's flicker. Alistair was bludgeoning a genlock who'd thrown himself on Zevran's prone form. Zevran was in nothing but his smalls and half-tangled in the canvas of his tent. The fingers of his one free arm were deep in the creature's neck – deeper than they'd sink into any other neck – trying to keep its rotting mouth from his face. Leliana's nightclothes glowed white as arrows flew from her bow. Morrigan was dressed and casting beside her. Shale kicked a genlock in the face, her face gleeful. She counted the rest of her companions. Where was Teagan? She glanced about and saw movement by the horses. She cursed and bolted for her weapon. A genlock caught sight of her and his split face broke further in a toothy grin. He rushed her. She tried to brace herself, but slipped in the wet snow and he crashed on top of her, his dagger sticking into her thigh. He stank of corpse. Loren smashed her elbow into this eye and he fell back. She tried to get to her feet, but he caught her and pulled. She slid, rolled over, and kicked her heel into the same eye. She felt it pop under her, but he didn't flinch.

"Loren!" She heard Alistair's frightened yell and saw him straighten over the still-tangled forms of the genlock and Zevran.

"Zevran!" She roared back at him, an order. He bent back to it.

The genlock sunk his other dagger into her leg, higher up, and hauled himself closer. She groped about her and her hands fell on a rock the size of two fists. Clutching it, she swung. His skull broke, but he kept pulling. She aimed for a different spot and it gave easily. He twitched and was dead. A warm, bready softness came over her and she moved her leg. It was sticky with blood, but whole. She stood.

A horse screamed. Alistair rushed past her in that direction. Zevran was swearing in Antivan, kicking at the remains of his tent with his skinny legs. He stopped, bent, and came up with two thin blades. He grinned at her, holding them up, but Loren saw blood down his face and neck. She grasped her own maul and turned grimly to the horses. Then she felt it – the stillness of an ogre settling to charge. She turned and saw its pupilless eyes fixed on her. She dropped down to try and keep her footing. It blinked at her, and Loren thought – for a moment – that it saw her, not as darkspawn see, but as living creatures see. It froze, and then with the smallest shake of its head, it charged her. She timed her first swing to catch him under his horns.

* * *

The smell was most like biryani: meaty and spicy. When Marethari served it at initiations, it was flavoured with a spicy-sweet red powder that grew only in the Korcari Wilds. Loren remembered sitting in the darkness of the aravel, hearing the celebrations run into the night and feeling all the imagined glamour of the forbidden. Except that she felt that she ought to be there, that it was her absence which was forbidden. Loren opened her eyes to Morrigan's yellow gaze.

"We won, then?"

"'Twas a close thing. What do you remember?"

"Getting charged by an ogre."

"Some level of concussion then. Lay still and I will do my best. Wynne is with Zevran." She spoke as she ran her hands above Loren. Blue light travelled from them to her, and Loren felt her body greedy for it. "We are all alive." Loren shifted to try and see past the mage to where the horses had been tethered. Morrigan made a noise of disgust. "Still," she ordered. Loren obeyed, surrounded by the uneasy combination of smells: her Clan's celebration and blood. "You don't ask after your bedmate?" Morrigan sounded pleased.

Loren did not respond to the tone, "You said we were all still alive."

"He is unconscious. The broken femur is not life threatening."

Loren remembered, suddenly. "I dreamt of you," the mage's gaze did not falter, "when I felt the darkspawn swarming under us."

"'Twas I that raised the alarm. The trap snapped and woke me."

"The darkspawn turned into you."

"Sit up. Tell me if it hurts, or if your vision blurs." Loren rolled slightly sideways, so she could use her arms to help push herself off the ground. She paused, then rose. Nothing felt amiss. "Now stay silent." Morrigan spread salve from a healing kit over Loren's skull. Her hands were hot and buzzed slightly with magic. Loren felt outward, but felt no echo of the taint in her. Just Alistair, weak and distant. Loren closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, though parted lips. To smite a mage, one must tense; to simply sense one, relax. Her belly dropped as she made the effort to be effortless. At first, she felt nothing, just the infinite black where her senses ended. Loren usually left this to Alistair, who was good at it. Drop into the dark, she heard him say. Drop into the dark, she told herself and she willed her own sinking. The dark rushed at her faster than she was moving to it. Dread rose around her: dread that underlay everything, that stretched from now to the unknown future, that dropped deep and endless beneath the earth and disappeared into the horde that seethed there. Her eyes snapped open and she moved from the human's hands. From the fear, anger rose as sharp and fast as snakes strike.

"I am done. Do nothing for the rest of the night."

Loren stood up immediately and stepped towards the horses. Morrigan caught her arm, "I said to do nothing." She glared at the other woman and twisted her arm to break the mage's grip. For the barest of beats, Morrigan looked surprised and hurt, then she shrugged. "Suit yourself." She strode back to her own fire, chin held high.

Loren shook her shoulders, trying to right herself, then went to check on the horses.

Only hers and Alistair's were still there – someone had cut the ropes that tied the others and they had fled into the forest. They'd be back. The blood Loren had smelled was the gelding's. He struggled to stand, but the ground was slick with blood, black in moonlight. The injured leg did not move as he struggled. Loren could see a slow heartbeat in the rhythmic wave that swelled noiselessly from the wound over his flank. The mare's neck was stretched as far to him as her rope allowed, ears forward and nostrils wide. Loren pulled the end of the rope and the mare was free to close the distance. She breathed hard into his face and he quieted. Loren squatted before him, laying her hands on his neck. He was slick with sweat, and the elf moved, slowly, to cover his body with her small one. He stayed still as she laid herself on him. The hot tang of him filled her nose. She could feel his exhausted panic, and in it, the echo of her own. Her body rose and fell with his breaths and she matched her breaths with his slow, deep ones.

She closed her eyes for the second time, and dropped into the dark dread that lay waiting for her. It rose with all the rush of a broken dam. She rolled in it, but stayed still for the sake of the animal. And as she let it move her unresisting, it thinned. Distant forms glowed through: one a pale yellow, hunched over some invisible form and surrounded by a distant summer sky blue – brilliant and bolstering. It pulsed once at her, as if in greeting. It glowed with wellness and Loren had to force herself to look away. Further away, Morrigan smouldered a smokey red, and thin mist siphoned off her into the fire Loren had always suspected was magically sustained. Loren felt the flow of Morrigan's magic, felt herself pulled along with it. She resisted, standing firm and strong – a trunk in the wind. She let her sense move closer and Morrigan enlarged. As she did, Loren's first sense, her Warden warning, tinged. It was yet another new feel: not the darkspawn screech of ripping metal, nor the low and steady thrum of another Warden which felt far distant, but always running closer. Nor was it the still, metallic tang of Avenus's vials. This tinge pushed back against the taint in her own blood, drew away from her like moisture sank from the sand around a footprint. Her awareness was sucked into the pull of Morrigan's smokey spice, even as it retreated from her. She was caught, stretched pleasantly between going and coming. Loren lingered there, pulled tight and longing for looseness.

Something shifted on the edge of her perception. Loren opened her eyes, back in the world, where Wynne was rushing to help and the horse was still breathing.


	11. Starfang

Thanks so much for the kind reviews. Thanks for reading!

**This is Better: Starfang**

* * *

It had not gone quickly or smoothly with the elves. In the end, Loren knew that if she couldn't convince Zathrian to end the curse, that she would have split him open for it. She hadn't felt terribly sympathetic to the humans he'd cursed, but it wasn't worth the welfare of the group.

Teagan and Alistair had made much more headway. Eamon had decided to send men out to patrol the main roads, which was, as Alistair pointed out, safely stanceless in the civil war. It had allowed Alistair and Teagan the freedom to crisscross the Bannhorn though. Alistair had put in a lot of face time, and Teagan had had to tell everyone who he was.

"I might actually be good at politics!" He'd told Loren later, after she'd berated Zathrian for several evenings. She smiled and him and let him talk while she cleared the gore out of her scale. "I still have no idea what I'm doing though."

"That's probably part of your appeal." She turned the scale over in her hands, looking for blood that had seeped right though the overlapping dragonhide. She knew it had come in somewhere – her underclothes were stained the stubborn brown of blood.

"Here, yes, while I'm saving their livestock and their labour. I'm sure Denerim will be another matter." Loren didn't know, but she hoped, for the sake of the humans, that this was not so.

It was not yet spring, but the thaw was in sight as Loren turned the party northward to Soldier's Peak and their stash there. Morrigan grew restless as they approached, but didn't drop any more hints. Loren took pains tried to keep Alistair and the mage apart. She didn't want Alistair sensing in her what she had seen on the night of the ambush.

When the path through the tunnels opened into the broad walkway of the Keep's approach, Morrigan pushed past them without a glance and mounted the steps. Leliana followed. Alistair opened his mouth to call after them, but Loren tugged his attention to Levi and the call died on his lips.

Levi aside, it was a colder than expected homecoming. The rest of the Drydens seemed uninterested in the Wardens, since they had failed to clear their good name. Loren was glad that the Keep was open to them, since they were unlikely to find a bed with any of Levi's family. The Keep was exactly as they had left it – Avernus did not seem to leave his tower, but neither templar sensed any unusual magic in the air.

Loren left Alistair in Sophia's office kicking apart a mouldering chair for the fire and went to speak to Mikhael. She returned to find Alistair squatting by the fireplace in his smalls, happily poking at the fire with an elaborate iron stick. He'd assumed that this was its purpose, since it was neither sturdy enough nor sharp enough to injury anyone in anything better than roughly cured leather. He tapped it aggressively on Loren's scaled shoulders to demonstrate. "Seems an awful waste of craftmanship," he said as he returned to stirring sparks. They swirled in the air before floating up the chimney. Loren pulled a long package out of her bag and poked him with it.

"Here. It's what I really did with the money I didn't give you outside Denerim that first – no, second – visit. I'd hoped to find someone earlier to craft it."

The longsword was supremely balanced and, in the firelight, glowed with a light all its own, just as the ore had done. Alistair stood between her and the fire and swung it experimentally, tested its weight and balance, swung it again. Loren laid on the floor and watched the obviously delighted expression play over his face. She rarely got an opportunity to just watch him, though she felt his eyes on her often. He raised the blade to his eye to check its edge, running a finger down its length. "It's exquisite. Thank you."

Loren went a little flush with his appreciation. "Can I tell you why I got you this particular present? There was enough for a greatsword, but I wanted it for you."

He smiled briefly at her before returning his eyes to the blade. "It's not because you wanted to bribe me into your bed?"

"No. I thought you were a bit of an ass at the time, actually." He gave her a falsely dour look. "I wanted it because all your best weapons used to belong to other men: Duncan, your father. I wanted you to have something entirely your own."

His voice was full of gratitude when he started with her name.

"Plus!" she interrupted. "My maul is pretty good. I mean, no Starfang. But decent."

He laid it carefully on its scabbard, squatted by her ankles, then pressed himself all up her body. When they were flush, he didn't kiss her, but pressed his forehead to hers. "Thank you."

She raised her face to his mouth and caught his lips. She pressed her body into his, her small, capable hands on his strong sides. She touched his face, silhouetted by the fire behind it. She saw the angle of his jaw, the stubborn spikes of his hair. She ran a finger along the ear she could see. "_Vir Alha_, my love. Find your own way to the sun."

This time, he met her mouth halfway. His large hands fumbled at her buckles, extracting her from the shell of her armour. Delighted, she let him pull her from it and lift her on top of him, let him squeeze her taunt buttocks. Her legs slipped to either side of him. She could see his face now, the half closest to the fire, the strength of his nose and his lips parting slightly. She leaned forward to kiss him, but his fingers tightened into the flesh of her two cheeks and pulled her groin to his mouth. Deliberately, he edged his nose at her folds, inhaling the scent of her before taking a single lip inside his mouth and sucking on it. Loren arched herself upward in the castle's warming air, the fire illuminating the edge of her body. She closed her eyes and ran a hand up from her own hip to the side of her breast – its weight played lightly on her fingers. Alistair turned his head and tentatively pushed tongue along the inner membrane of her. She groaned encouragement and felt her wetness swelling. He let her lip loose and moved his mouth gingerly over her clit. His breath cooled her and she took a breast in each hand. His mouth closed on her clit, suctioning it further outside its hood and his thumb prodded hesitatingly from behind. She grunted encouragement and it pressed, not inside but at her. The muscle relaxed on its own accord and circled his thumb pad, and he pulled down, stretching her. The suction on her clit eased as he ran tongue and lip over it, then he took her again in his mouth. Her breath fell to her belly and she ran her palms over her nipples. A finger slipped slick inside her, and everything was lost as her senses hummed, hummed, and hummed.

* * *

Leliana followed the two mages to the doors that closed Avernus's study off from the rest of the Keep. She caught only their terse greetings before all sound was suddenly muffled. One of them must have cast a spell. Leliana cursed softly and began searching for another place to listen from. Marjolaine had never appreciated it if Leliana had questioned her decisions, so the bard kept quiet to Loren about Morrigan. Leliana saw the fire flickering under the Warden's closed door and hurried by it. Loren had more in common with Marjolaine than she knew. Leliana recognized the doe-like affection in Alistair's eyes with fond regret. Marjolaine had deserved her death, but Leliana deserved to remember what came before it, and so it was with the privileged air of the recently heartbroken that she watched the Wardens plot their own despair. She imagined Loren as Alistair took the throne and made the choices that he'd have to make. Love without fidelity always came down.

An unbarred window. Leliana looked cautiously out. It was some twenty feet of ledge from Avernus's window, but unless one of the mages actually stuck a head out a window, she would remain unseen. The bard smiled to herself. It was not only for Loren's sake that she forewent sleep and safety; she loved this. The ledge was narrower than she thought: a heel's width. No matter. A breeze picked up and Leliana looked down. Darkness swelled below her feet, but she caught the barest outline of a leafless bush below her. The wind swept the exposed skin of her collarbone. Being in her leathers again felt good. She edged her fingers along the rough stone of the tower and eased her weight off the windowsill and onto the ledge. Leliana picked her way along the wall, each step inching until she was close enough to hear the mages talking.

"Won't the darkspawn also hear this Call and come looking for it on the surface?" Morrigan's voice sounded thinner than usual.

"Of course."

Morrigan threw her head back in an entirely unconscious imitation of her mother. A shiver of fear ran through the young mage and she wondered again if going through with Flemeth's plan was wise, what the old woman had wanted with the child. She shook it all off. Flemeth wanted nothing needlessly. "Does this not strike you as problematic?"

"Indeed. It was the most problematic of all these cryptic notes." Avernus waved a hand over the copies of the relevant parts of Flemeth's grimoire that Morrigan had made for him. Morrigan suppressed her irritation. She could master this man and get what she needed. She stared at him, and he continued as if he had made no notice of her impatience. "But I believe I may have found something of use for you," he resettled the pages of notes, "here." Morrigan leaned forward, but he covered it with his hand. "In addition to the spell she knew to hide a Warden from the darkspawn, which was common magic in my day." He reached into a pocket of his robes and pulled a vial from it. "I can give you this, which you can take in the third week. It will let the protection that Flemeth has already cast on you extend to the soul within you. It will suppress the Call for a fortnight."

"Not longer?"

"I could make it last longer, but why would I? Then you could go anywhere and all my research," he held up both hands, the vial still held, "gone."

"What do you want?"

"Access."

Morrigan was not quick enough to conceal her aversion and the man chuckled. "No need to raise your maternal hackles. I will not harm it. I wish only the opportunity to study."

Something fluttered within Morrigan as she straightened her features and answered him with all the coolness she could muster. "We seek the same, then." It fluttered again, then was gone.

"Then we can help each other." The man offered not his hand, but the vial.

Morrigan's flat yellow eyes searched his face. "This will leave the Call intact?"

"Without the Call, what good is it?" Morrigan took the vial and pocketed it. "How will you convince the Wardens? The male in particular seemed unpardonably inflexible."

Morrigan waved a hand at him, "I have it under control."

* * *

Alistair had folded his long length around the warmer, smaller body of Loren. She lay still, watching the embers smoulder and shine, feeling supremely happy. Starfang shimmered on its scabbard near their feet.

As the bliss of their exertions wore off, the creep of dread returned to Alistair, making him restless. He had already decided to let the Landsmeet make him King, and he knew what he needed to do. He had decided to put it off until the moment of the Landsmeet. He could be free a few more weeks.

"Tell me about the Dalish. We hardly learnt anything about them in the Chantry."

Loren hesitated, and, for the first time, realized how hard it was to define something so intrinsically a part of you. If someone had asked her to define a Warden, she could have done so easily: blood, bad dreams, distant-warning systems, fighting, obligation, a moral high ground in politics, an excuse to drink the illegal magic of crazy old men. Being Dalish was looser and larger than being a Warden. She could tell him the pat history that they knew of themselves: Arlathan, loss, slavery, lots of walking, slaughter. She thought of deer falling in the snow, her and Tamlen slicing through the thick membrane of the belly and tying the intestines off and leaving them for the wolves. Of course, she had did that with Leliana most months. She thought of the food wrapped in the broad maple leaves: how after the rare freezes, it thawed spicier than it'd been before. She thought of her sickness as a young girl in the lurching aravels, drawn by the undirected halla. She thought again, of Zathrian, his daughter, and the place he'd found himself in with no good choice. Being Dalish, she thought, left you with no good choices.

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything."

Loren waved a hand. "That's too hard. Ask me a question."

"Tell me about Dalish weddings."

She laughed at him, "You humans. You always think everyone is just a shade of you."

"What?"

"We don't marry. We don't believe in the Maker, remember?"

"You do."

"I never said that!"

"What? Eamon dying in his bed? Disease resisting all known magic? Suddenly sprightly after one sprinkle of Ashes?"

"I admit the Ashes had power. I never admitted that it was your Maker."

"Riiiiiiight." She shook her head at his tone. It was unusual, among Dalish men, to present oneself with less than perfect seriousness. She had forgotten that in her absence from them, and squirmed in Alistair's arms to smile at him. He closed his arms across her back. "So, no marriages? I find that strange. What do you do, then? Just . . . share a tent?"

"Aravel. And, yes."

"Really?" He sounded intrigued and a bit excited. He was, Loren thought, still a man, despite the Chantry. That was good.

"Yes. Most Clans are too small to support exclusive mating, so it's encouraged. It gives the next generation more choice and keeps the Clan strong. Sometimes, people chose to bond with each other; it's like a marriage in that everyone acknowledges the primacy of the attachment, but they can still end it, and if they haven't each made children prior to that, they will still be expected to . . . there's no word for it in your language. Spread their children around."

"You mean, sleep with other people?" Loren ticked a finger in the air over her shoulder in affirmation. "That's staggering to me."

"Having sex with only one person, ever, staggers me. How very dull for you all."

His automatic response was to tell her to not hurt his feelings, but as he did so, his brain was grinding into excited action. "So Dalish spouses aren't faithful?"

She turned her head at him, "Of course they are. They just sometimes have sex with other people. And sometimes they leave each other."

Alistair raised an eyebrow. Loren really seemed to have no idea how contradictory every human everywhere would find that. "I have no idea what that means."

"It means that faithfulness is also about accepting what sometimes has to happen."

"You do know that I've been tearing myself up over the fact that I won't be able to marry you, don't you? I've never been with another woman, and I never want to be." Loren opened her mouth, "But mostly, I just don't want to be without you."

The certainty that this declaration was coming did not make Loren reel less. Long ago, she'd decided that she would never bond. Living with a Clan was already so intimate, every moment in the close company of a handful of other people, that more proximity was not something she'd ever longed for. She'd watched the dubious certainty of newly bonded pairs with contempt. The line they drew between themselves and everyone else was fictitious, and Loren had always been more comfortable in the acknowledgement of ambiguity. She liked Alistair, liked his good cheer and his earnestness, liked the comfort of a familiar body in her bed and the ways that they were learning each other. She also liked that there could never be a permanent union between them. No Clan would bond them, and no Landsmeet would let them marry. Whatever they had now, and would have into the future, would always be based entirely on the fact that they both would want it. Which, in the end, was the only way she'd have it. It was truer, and under in truth, she felt something of the certainty she saw in the faces of the couples she'd watched bond.


	12. The One General in Ferelden

Sorry for my ridiculous lateness with this. My group has a revolving DM and my turn has been sucking both my time and my creative juices. The next chapter is almost ready to go though, so it shouldn't be such a wait. Thanks for your patience.

This occurs just after Anora's rescue and the Wardens' escape from Fort Drakkon.

**This is Better: The One General in Fereldan**

* * *

Loren grabbed Riordan and manhandled him across the room. Alistair gave a small breath of surprise, but Sten was immediately at her side. Loren could sense Morrigan moving closer, and felt a flash of gratitude, even as she addressed the man who was not bothering to resist her, "No."

"Pardon?" Riordan looked much calmer than Loren would have suspected him capable of in the unblinking face of the qunari. She shoved him into a chair. Eamon and Anora moved farther against the wall, glancing nervously at one another.

"You are going nowhere until I get good long answers to all my questions. I have been working with half-information for over a year. You are the first person in that time who can make my life easier, and you are going to do it."

Riordan looked up into the face of bald, angry elf, "This is Warden information." Loren sighed, but Alistair looked up and nodded at the room's other occupants. Anora and Eamon were out of the room almost immediately. Morrigan tried to tarry long enough to hear the beginning of the conversation, but Sten propelled her through the door, closed it behind them, and took a position of attention on its other side.

Morrigan lingered at the intersection of the hallways, "Eavesdropping?"

"No."

The witch leaned against a corner, her hands behind her. "'Tis a better way than most to know what you want to know."

"The Warden will tell us what we need to know."

The witch raised an eyebrow, "That's a lot of faith, coming from you."

Sten looked offended, "It is not a matter of faith. Only humans believe in things they have no evidence for." Morrigan scoffed automatically and walked away.

Inside Eamon's room, Riordan was telling Loren and Alistair that there were compelling reasons that Duncan had requested reinforcements from Orlais, despite the political problems he knew it would pose. "Define compelling," Alistair ordered stiffly.

"A Warden's taint attracts the Archdemon as it is killed. If it is slain by any other than a Warden, that essence travels to the nearest darkspawn and it must be killed anew." Riordan looked with satisfaction over the silence his revelation inspired.

Loren watched the senior Warden thoughtfully. She supposed she had always known there would be something like this. While her and Alistair's ability to sense the darkspawn had been useful, it would hardly be needed to locate a great ugly dragon leading several thousand darkspawn across the surface of Thedas. "What's the good reason for keeping this secret, again?"

Riordan's answer to Loren's question had something to do with the ridiculous odds of the darkspawn even finding an Archdemon in the deep parts of the world. Loren listened long enough to realize that the short answer was "none." Her attention caught momentarily on Riordan's mention of the gods' call; while it twigged something in her memory, her attention was focused the suddenly much more significant scarcity of Wardens. Alistair was staring grimly at her from the other side of Riordan's chair as he spoke. She returned his gaze, but she was feeling a thrill of privilege rather than the panic that seemed to press on him. She didn't bother hiding her smile. It was a grimly satisfied expression, full of self-importance and excitement, and it unnerved her lover.

"Can you perform the Joining?" she asked the Orlesian

"I have the Joining for one, yes."

"Give it to me." He appraised her a moment, a long and level look. Alistair cleared his throat behind him, and the older Warden took the vial out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Thank you. You are free to do whatever it is that you think you need to do."

"Choose your recruit wisely. Not all survive the Joining."

Alistair feigned shock, "You don't say."

* * *

Loren tried to walk with the quick shuffle that Zevran had shown her. Erlina had watched her skeptically as she'd practiced in Eamon's hallways. Alistair's shouts had been ringing in her ears then, making her angry and rushed. It had been hard then, but harder now when every part of her body was alive with the stakes she was playing. _Don't look at the bowl_, she told herself. _Look ahead and you won't spill._ She looked up.

"Eyes down," Zevran whispered urgently behind her. He had a towel over his shoulder and a straight razor in his hand. It was the only weapon either of them would be able to reach in a hurry and Loren felt naked in her servant's clothing. Loren remembered Alistair's expression – worried and angry – when she'd left Eamon's estate. He had not tried to stop her. Loren softened her grip on the warm bowl, breathing out into her diaphragm. It would not help her to dwell on him now. Zevran cleared his throat softly, and she turned left off the main hall into a narrower one.

"Walk closer to the wall," he whispered again. She shifted as close to it as she could get without bumping an elbow against it. A door opened beside her and she jumped, slopping water over her arm. A guard tsked her as swept by. Loren shook the water off her wrist, annoyed at her own skittishness. Zevran chuckled close to her ear, "Such a performance. Loghain's door is the first after your next right."

The two elves moved with the hurried, light steps of domestic servants around the corner. Zevran stood close behind Loren, his face obscured, as she knocked tentatively on the door.

"Come." Loren pushed the door open.

Loghain looked up from the desk in the far corner of the room and gestured with his quill at a small table by the window. "Put it down. I'll shave myself." Loghain was still in his bedclothes. Loren made her way across the room with her eyes low, but moved to the far side of the table so she could see Zevran's hand on the deadbolt. Deliberately, she bumped into the table; the scrape of its wood legs on the stone floor covered the slide of the bolt. Loren stood up straight. Loghain was leaning back in his chair, glowering darkly at Zevran.

"Is there no elf whose loyalty can be bought?"

Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, Loren spun away from the four poster bed just as its curtains were pulled back and four men spilled out. They were armed and armoured. Loren felt her dagger against her ribs. She'd never get it in time, but she had no intention of being taken without a fight. She dropped to a crouch and fumbled at her clothing. Two men rushed her, one Zevran. She dodged one's swipe, but felt the fast burn of a sword at her thigh. Her fingers found the cool metal of her dagger's hilt and she wretched at it. Fabric ripped away and her dagger was free, but she could hear Zevran fall beside the door to the royal chambers.

* * *

Loghain was nothing if not patient. He was sitting on a small stool in a corner of a cell in Fort Drakkon, waiting for the elf woman to wake. He remembered the looks on the bruised faces of the men she'd beat unconscious just yesterday when she and the upstart had fought their way out. He knew that leaving her here unattended . . . he shook the too-familiar image of his mother out of his head. It was replaced by Katriel. He tilted his head at the woman on the floor. This elf was not as pretty as Katriel, nor so helpless looking. Her cheekbones were as high and broad, but where Katriel's face had tapered sweetly to a small chin, the Warden's jaw flared back out. It gave her whole face a slightly hour-glass, stubborn shape. It was not a face you'd immediately trust, and this made him feel better. As he contemplated that reaction, he saw her jaw clench.

The pierce of ammonia registered in Loren's nose. She took stock: still dressed, good; no weapon, bad; blood caked over her left ear, good, because there was no pain under it; back in a cage, very bad. She opened her eyes. Loghain was sitting in the furthest corner of the cell. She picked herself up to a sitting position, "You took my dagger."

"You weren't very good with it."

The two warriors regarded each other a moment: he in his old, tarnished plate and she in servant's clothing. If this discrepancy bothered her, she did not show it. The reality was that most of the power – at least, the power that mattered – was entirely on her side. Howe's last reports had not been good; Teagan's help to Alistair in the Bannorn would not be undone. It was ironic that the region of Fereldan that Maric had always struggled so hard to sway had fallen so easily to this boy. The surety of the Warden's victory in the Landsmeet was the only reason that she was still alive; he could think of nothing that she would gain by murdering him in his palace. Nor would his killing her prolong his ability to rule Fereldan. "Anora is prepared to speak against you in return for keeping her throne," she said.

Of course she was, he thought with the barest flicker of pride. "Anora send her handmaiden to warn me of your attempt."

Loghain listened to the elf swear in her own language. For all the usual softness of elven, it didn't sound good now. She shook her head, "Human politics largely escape me, Loghain, but I know you – you settled a dispute between my Clan and some of your own men years ago."

Loghain searched his memory, but nothing surfaced. "And?"

"You ruled with us. My Keeper's mentioned it monthly ever since."

"I fail to see the significance."

"I doubt you orchestrated the defeat at Ostagar, and I doubt you want darkspawn crawling over Fereldan. Our goals are the same."

Gone were the days when he could pretend that this was not a Blight. Darkspawn were spilling over every road in Fereldan, chasing its population to Kirkwall and beyond. Daily, Loghain got letters of complaint from every part of Fereldan that his army was too thinly spread. Lothering and the Wilds were already lost, and even if an Archdemon never appeared, it would take years to reclaim them. He still blamed the witch in the swamps. Maybe she'd told Maric the truth, but more likely she'd created the truth she'd wanted to tell him.

"What do you want?"

"Your help. I don't know how to run an army, and neither does Alistair or Eamon."

He snorted.

"Several conditions. At the Landsmeet, you will give up your regency and your teryn. Your army will join my forces. I will remain in command until the Blight is defeated, or we fall. You will be my advisor." Loren thought of Sten and Oghren. "One of my advisors. When we make our stand, you'll be on the front, where you can do no harm."

"And in return?"

Loren looked surprised. "There's no in return. This is exactly what I'll ask of you in the Landsmeet, but Bann Teagan tells me it would be far better to hash it out beforehand. I can also promise you that you will not find Alistair quite so willing to negotiate as I."

"Let Anora keep her throne.'

"No."

Loghain did not have the opportunity to consider that before he was distracted by boots ringing down the corridor. They clicked to attention outside the cell and he turned to see a young man, one eye swollen shut in a recent bruise, standing at attention. "Ser, there's a delivery at the doors from the Crafter's Guildhall." He glanced at Loren, who was staring intently at the man, as if trying to place him. He did not return the gaze.

"And?" Loghain snapped.

"Ser, there's no record of a delivery and there's a masked templar with her."

Loren and Loghain sighed in unison. Much to Loghain's irritation, she did not suppress her amusement when she turned to him. "Shall we go prevent an incident? I have no desire to further alienate what will become my troops."

"I have not taken your offer, Warden."

"I don't actually need you to take it. Either you do, or you get whatever Alistair offers you at the Landsmeet. I'd suggest the former."

Loghain led her out of the cell, and took her elbow to steer her past the hostile stares of the guards. She let him, and Loghain was reminded forcibly of Rowan whenever Maric escorted her anywhere. He may have been the charismatic one, but no one looking at them wondered where the strength of their rule came from. They found her two rescuers well within the Fort. A dark-haired woman in Chantry robes was in whispered conversation with a female guard Loghain didn't recognize. The guard looked near tears. The faceless bucket of the templar helmet turned towards them.

"Loren!" The helmet came off to reveal the slightly-frantic upstart under it. He covered the ground between them in quick, long strides and pulled Loren out of Loghain's loose grip and crushed her to him. Heads throughout the hall turned to them, and Loghain raised a hand to forestall any heroics. The guard – Tanna, Loghain remembered – retreated without much grace. Alistair kissed the top of the elf's bare head and ran a hand down her back. Loghain watched the man enthusiastically embarrass himself over the elf. He probably was Maric's bastard. Loghain supposed that was good, but wasn't sure. He turned his face from the two of them, and caught a thoughtful expression on the face of the woman he was with. She was rather beautiful, he shocked himself by noticing. As if she heard his thoughts, she turned her face towards him. Her eyes were yellow and startling.

"Loghain, I would like to continue this conversation. I guarantee your safety at Eamon's estate."

Alistair stiffened at Loren's words, but pressed his lips together in a familiar acquiescence. As used as Loghain was to seeing Maric's expressions on the faces of young men he didn't care for, he had never seen Cailen wear that one. That was definitely good. Loghain nodded at the shorter Warden and both men fell in behind her.

The Warden's mabari greeted them at the doors to Eamon's estate. She spared him only a single pat in acknowledgment and the beast fell in beside her, smartly at the heel. Loghain approved.

Anora had heard the footsteps of the returning party and glided into the hallway to meet them. She froze at the sight of her father, but statesman that she was, it was only for a moment before the two embraced. She released him almost immediately. He searched her face, but it was turned away from him and unreadable. He followed her gaze to the two Wardens, him hunched over her and talking in low, concerned tones. The bastard radiated relief. Her face was turned up to his, and Loghain could see that she was pleased by his concern, despite its unnecessary nature.

"I am pleased you are well, father," Anora said. Loghain realized that she was speaking to him with the same wary courtesy that she'd once treated Duncan with. He looked at her and saw that there was nothing left of the child he'd known her as. Nothing, even, of the young woman he'd walked down the aisle to give to their worthless young king. She was older now than he and Maric and Rowan had been when the rebellion had finally started to turn in their favour. She turned from him. "Warden, I am sure you have things to discuss with my father and I. Please," she held her hand out towards her room.

The Wardens, their companions, Loghain, and Riordan followed her gesture inside. Loghain was pleased to see that Zevran did not look permanently worse for the beating he'd taken. The elf even managed to look slightly abashed when Loghain sent him a searching look. Teagan shot an infuriatingly condescending look at Loghain. Just as Anora was about to close her door, Eamon hurried in, looking about the room like a man who didn't quite understand how things had gotten so far away from him.

Anora surveyed the room with equal foreboding. The Warden had never needed her support, and with her father in the room, she was unlikely to be able to convince her that she did. The best she could hope for was an appeal to competency. She looked over at Alistair and realized that he must be a good decade younger than herself. He looked very like Cailen, but with less swagger and, she was sure, more competency in battle. He looked ill at ease, but attentive: quite the opposite of her late husband.

Loren outlined the offer she'd made to Loghain to the room. Alistair squirmed, but kept his peace.

Anora spoke up, "Your offer does you credit, Warden. My father is an experienced general and will serve you well." Alistair crossed his arms pointedly. Anora sent him a scathing look. "Let your wisdom serve you equally well when you consider the matter of the throne. Who do you think has been running this country the last five years?"

Alistair stood at this, "Judging by the last year, your father. Loren wants him to live, and Maker help him if he tries to betray her. But keeping Anora lets him keep his foot in Denerim: regent or no. I won't allow it."

"Conscript Loghain." Riordan suggested, from the back. "Wardens cannot hold titles – "

"Clearly," Loghain's dry voice had a way of ending complaint, but Riordan ignored him.

"Without first having the leave of the Warden Commander of their country. Conscripting Loghain would . . . reassure him of the Blight's reality and ensure his loyalty. He would be a fine asset. I admit that this had been my intention."

"Absolutely not," Alistair thundered. "Becoming a Warden is a privilege, not a sentence." Anora cast a pointed look at Loren.

"Where did you get that idea?" Riordan asked, genuinely surprised. All heads turned to him. "Did Duncan never tell you how he was recruited? He killed a Warden in a scrap over a piece of jewelry. The man's fiancée was a Warden and recruited him - part as recognition, part as punishment. Her life..." Riordan glanced at Loghain, "Did not end well."

Alistair became momentarily incapable of seeing, but was pleased, when his vision restored itself, to find that he was still upright and that no one seemed to have noticed. "Well, that's the first thing to change under my rule."

"Alistair," Loren warned. "You will have very little say over the Wardens' conscription while you rule."

There had never really been an option in Loghain's mind. He knew the Landsmeet was lost, and he knew that prolonging it would only further weaken Fereldan. If the Banns wanted an untried bastard with a dubious claim of blood, then he could still help the one Fereldan left alive who seemed to want his help, elf though she was. He wondered how quickly he could shut down his operations in the alienage. "I accept your offer, Warden. I will renounce my position as High Chancellor and my claim to Gwaren at the Landsmeet, and I will serve you against the Blight and beyond it." He knelt. "I ask that you allow my daughter to carry on in Gwaren."

"No!" Anora yelled. "I am Queen."

He turned his head to her, "It's over, Anora."

"No," she took a deep breath and turned to Loren. "If you're so charmed by Alistair that you can't see what a disaster he will be, then at least let me rule with him as Queen."

Loren looked thoughtful, Alistair positively alarmed. He shot a panicked look at the elf, as the Orlesian bard in the corner spoke for the first time, "You have to marry someone, Alistair. Someone human."

The man's face crumpled in an expression that Loghain knew very well indeed and saw clearly how unlike his father Cailen had always been. He saw his strong, beautiful daughter holding her own against a room full of people determined to oust her, bidding to marry a man she didn't love and who clearly loved someone else. He thought of Rowan kissing him the last time, and something that had been dormant a long time twitched in him. He looked at Alistair, who wasn't even looking in Anora's direction, but staring fixedly at the elf. "Anora, don't do that."

"I know what I'm doing," she said, shushing her father and reassuring Loren all at once. Her eyes flicked between the elf and the bastard, "I know what it means."

Alistair looked at her, "Be my High Chancellor, then."

Her eyes narrowed in barely concealed suspicion. "High Chancellors can be replaced."

"Which is why I offer it to you; it keeps your father out of it." He held out a hand to her, "I promise to give you every opportunity to prove that you are irreplaceable." Anora knew immediately that she had no choice, no clout here. She took his hand. Loren and Loghain looked pleased. Anora and Alistair both slightly bewildered.


	13. Muster

Thanks for all your comments and messages, all. The feedback is muchly appreciated.

**This is Better: Muster**

* * *

They rode out the day after the Landsmeet to muster at Teagan's estate in east Bannhorn. The majority of the horde was still in the south, and the Bannorn was central, closest to everywhere. Only Eamon had seemed disappointed in the Landsmeet's outcome; the rest of Fereldan's nobility had cheered to see the Mac Tirs and the Wardens enter together and crowned Alistair immediately. Support had poured in. Anora was left in charge of Denerim, granted not only regency over Fereldan for the duration of the Blight, but control over the Teyrnirs of Denerim and her own Gwaren.

"If I die, you make sure Loghain dies too," had been Alistair's only comment while the two women - Loren and Anora - hammered out the details beside the mostly silent future King and entirely silent ex-regent. Loren reminded him that Loghain was far more expendable than he was, crown aside. This went a long way to pacify the new king. Loghain, sitting in the corner, had not commented. Anora had simply flattened her lips together.

Teagan and Loren rode ahead with a small company. Teagan to prepare his own estate for guests, and Loren to be present as the Wardens' allies arrived. Alistair and Loghain stayed behind to prepare Denerim's security as well as to be visible to the troops. Neither man would admit it, but they matched each other well. Loghain's steady presence reassured the troops, and Alistair's good humour set them at ease. Anora noticed, but wisely said nothing. A fortnight later, the troops that could be spared from Denerim were ready to move. Anora woke early to see them off. She had reclaimed the royal bedroom at the palace, since Alistair had refused to take it and they were short of room. It was strange, waking early in the same bedroom to see her father and Maric's other son off to fight the darkspawn. This morning, more so than that other morning, she felt uncertainty urging time on. She had given as much credence to Duncan's reports as her father had and had often locked eyes with him while Cailen drank it all in. Now, of course, there was little question of the Blight's reality and it was a grimmer walk to the stables in the misty spring of morning. Her father bade her farewell with a little of the cool affection he'd treated her with all her life. Alistair, who she'd known under a month, was warmer than even Cailen had been, grinning at her and leaving his horse to thank her for seeing them off. She watched the troops ride out from a window in her room, her father and her future king indistinguishable in the crush of horses and men. There was a funny press in her heart. She let the curtain fall shut and turned to the tasks of the day. An unwelcome thought reminded her that she had Alistair to thank for this satisfying busyness.

* * *

It was not a forced march to Teagan's estate, but each night, Loghain pulled his maps out for study, worrying over the ground they'd covered and the miles left to ride. He'd been thrilled to leave behind the large tent that Cailen had always insisted on; if his king – thinking the word in a tone of snide dismissal made him feel better about the whole situation – carried only the Warden-issue one-man, he would make do with the same. Laying over his bedroll in his gambeson, he held his travelling map up to the light filtering through the canvas side. He closed his bad eye and squinted at it. They'd made a good 25 miles that day. Excellent, considering most of the men were on foot. It had been Alistair's idea to send the staff and the cooks ahead on horseback with the cavalry. The soldiers walked hard, but got to stop to a hot meal and tents set up. It had been a fine idea. Loghain made a small noise of satisfaction and was starting to roll his map carefully when he heard feet falling on the ground outside his tent. He paused, listening. The footfalls ended, but no greeting came. Loghain reached, slowly and carefully, for the twin set of daggers he kept by his bed.

"Loghain?"

It was the boy-king. Loghain sighed, and passed over his daggers for his cloak. "A moment," he called. The footsteps retreated. He arranged the cloak over him as best he could in his reclining position. It was a rich, heavy velvet, a gift from Celia, and he felt an odd twinge whenever he put it on. Not of grief, exactly. Guilt, perhaps. His fingers fumbled at the tie.

Decent, he emerged. Alistair looked like Maric in the firelight. He looked like Maric all the time. Loghain rubbed his face, annoyed at his own sentimentality. Alistair turned to him and the two stared at each other in the firelight. Loghain could hear the bard singing somewhere nearby, the accent audible even through the melody. His jaw tightened.

"Loren trusts you."

"Does she?"

"I don't, but she generally has a better idea of what's going on than I do." Loghain waited for the boy to come to the point. Alistair turned to the fire, and spoke into it, rather than at Loghain. "Our only volunteer for the Joining was Sten, and Riordan tells me that he's not sure it's suitable for a Qunari, which leaves me the choice of conscripting someone who has volunteered to help Loren and I for the last year, or going amoung our soldiers. Riordan reminded me that he still thought you the most likely candidate for survival." Loghain flinched. Having the approval of an Orlesian supporter had never been on his list of desired credentials. "So," the boy paused, "I suppose I am offering it to you."

"And my inability to hold a title after taking this has nothing to do with your decision, I am sure."

Alistair shrugged. "I never wanted the throne. I suppose that if I die and you do, then at least other men will see it coming when you let them die for your convenience."

Loghain was unmoved. Let the boy struggle awhile and he'll see.

Alistair pulled the vial that Riordan had given him from his belt pouch and handed it to Loghain. It was wrapped in padding. "There are words that have been said at every Joining since the first, but I don't much feel like it."

"I need no ceremony."

"I'll come see if you're dead in the morning."

The boy turned to leave, and was almost out of the firelight when Loghain called his name. Alistair looked paler and ageless in the dark, without the reddening glow of the fire, and his eyes focused on Loghain from a face that seemed bloodless. "Had I charged, you'd have even fewer troops now."

When the boy answered, there was none of Maric's early friendliness in his voice, just a tired resignation that made Loghain think of the Chantry where Maric had found his revenge. "So I've been told."

* * *

By the time Loren and Teagan were halfway through the plains of the Bannhorn, the snow had long ago seeped deep into the earth, and the spring winds ran unchecked, sending dust and dirt visibly swirling.

Teagan had stopped at the household of a small landowner whom he had not heard from since before Ostagar. Loren waited on her chestnut mare, who wouldn't stand calmly in the wind, and watched Teagan walk back out of the one-story farmhold, his face clouded and grim. "We'll have to come back and set fire to this one too."

Loren had noticed a strange change in her friends since the Landsmeet and Riordan's revelation; they were all looking past the Blight to the recovery that would have to come. It was as if the civil war were the thing that had to be survived rather than the Blight. Or perhaps it was having the responsibility of the archdemon's death laid exclusively on the Wardens – Loren had told them immediately after Riordan had told her – that relieved them of the pressures they'd been under. Perhaps it was only the effect of spring. Whatever the cause, Loren was enjoying it. In her Clan, the furthest anyone could see was the end of the elven, and Loren had found it easy to switch her grim focus to the Blight. Now though, there was talk of renewal and rebuilding, and it gave Loren the sense that she was fighting for something, rather than just prolonging the end.

Teagan carried a bush chicken in one hand. He held it up to Loren as he reapproached his horse. "Heard it cowering in the bush." The chicken had not yet taken on the deflated look of the dead, and Loren nodded at him approvingly.

Loren sipped a bitter grassy tea and watched Morrigan roast the bird over an impossibly perfect fire. The wind had coated the bird several times over with grit. Still, the juice ran warm over Loren's hands as she tore it into strips that crunched in her teeth. Teagan brought out a dark bread and a white rectangle of a food Loren didn't know the name of, but which she loved. It was the consistency of muscle, but uniform throughout. Teagan sliced it, the dull blade pressing it to his dirty thumb. Loren folded her bread around it and put it in her mouth hurriedly. It coated her tongue with a satisfying thickness and bit into the dryness of her mouth that she couldn't drink away.

Loren heard one of the horses moving against the small clump of trees they'd tethered them to, but Sten was up and gone before she rose.

"Spring's never this dusty in the forest." Loren pointed out as Teagan ducked his head away from another gust of grit.

"The trees break the wind and hold down the soil. In my father's time, we grew rows of trees every few hundred feet to break the wind, but recently," he shrugged. "We've need the extra space for farming."

"So this is the earth blowing away?" Loren asked, horrified. She glanced upwards, at the swirling winds and their dirty load.

"Usually, we can call for the mages to come and keep the land damp until the rains come." He looked out over the fields, "We're in for a few lean years."

Again, that grim optimism. Loren smiled at him. Cabel trotted up to her, the corners of his eyes crusty with expelled grime. He was grinning so widely that his face folded in two diagonal creases of skin over his cheekbones. She took his face in both hands and wiped the crunch away before throwing him the bird's carcass. He caught it deftly and scampered away to break its bones open in private. Loren had been relieved when he'd been waiting by the mare the morning they'd left. The dog had taken to following Loghain around, which Loghain had encouraged with an affectionate gruffness that appealed greatly to the animal.

"In Orlais, there are dogs who would choke to death on chicken bones."

Loren raised an eyebrow at him, "You're putting me on again."

"I'm not."

"When were you in Orlais?"

"I went with Eamon when he asked for Isolde's hand. They have the tiniest dogs there. Some are the size of a squirrel."

Loren smirked, "You know, you almost had me about the bones."

"Suit yourself," he smiled good humouredly at her incredulity. Loren watched him try to rub the dirt off his drumstick.

* * *

The elves were the first to arrive. They did so at dusk and tightened their aravels in a close circle in the most distant corner of Teagan's fields. Loren took a distant pride in their readiness, and was able to greet Lanaya by name and in elven. Teagan stood close by her, and Lanaya switched to Fereledan.

"We thank you for your hospitality, Bann Teagan."

"Is there anything your Clan needs, Keeper?"

"We tend ourselves."

No other elves approached Loren, so she camped by the estate.

The mages and the dwarves arrived the following day and filled much of space between the elves and the estate. Dagna was not with them, but the mages arrived expecting to like the dwarves, found that they did, and were liked in return.

Alistair, Loghain, and the Guard of Denerim arrived the next day. Loren caught Alistair's long-legged enthusiasm coming toward her, and she wrapped up her conversation with Lanaya in time to greet her lover. She was grateful for the press of tents and people between her and the landships. Sten and Oghren were moving around the new arrivals, trying to nudge the tents into orderly rows that men could move between.

"That's the second-longest we've ever been apart," he smiled at her, as if this were some kind of accomplishment. Beside them, Loren caught the interested glance of two nearby guards.

"True. Teagan sent me for you. He wants a word."

Alistair nodded with some trepidation. "Is Riordan back?"

"Riordan stayed with you."

"He went ahead to listen in."

"He can do that?" Alistair shrugged. Loren's irritation spiked. It'd be easier if Riordan would be more open with her. Given her experience with both Duncan and Riordan, Loren wondered how the other Blights had even been conquered. More than anything else, Loghain had brought with him an easy system of communication between troops and commanders.

Alistair had still not left for Teagan's stone home. "I need to find Loghain also."

A curious look passed over Alistair's face, but he chose not to comment. "See you there then," he said and kissed her. He backed away from her, only slightly pink in his cheeks and blustered away. Loren caught the eye of one of the guards still watching them. A corner of his mouth turned upwards, and he raised his mug slightly at her before returning his attention to his companion.

Loren found Loghain deep in negotiation with one of the smiths the dwarven army had brought with them. At this close distance, Loren could feel the barest buzz of Loghain's new taint and was pleased. She knew how much the loyalty of the Denerim troops relied on Loghain's cooperation, and she had not been mistaken in his willingness. Besides his expertise and the troops' familiarity with him, he had been careful to allow her and Alistair the appearance of leadership. She thanked him by not pretending she knew better than he did.

She waded into their argument over repairing the sets of scale Loghain had brought with him from Denerim to help equip whichever of the allies were underequipped. Neither of them had mentioned Eamon's name in the decision to do this, though both knew who they were referring to. Nor did Loghain comment on the Arl's men's absence now. The dwarf was reluctant to work on this "surfacer" armour. Glancing at it, Loren did not blame him – it was of poor quality and rusted in its joints. Finally, it was her suggestion that the pieces might be beyond the possibility of repair that caused the dwarf to take a higher price than Loghain thought fair. The dwarf took the suits with a sullen face and a promise for the morning.

"Teagan has suggested a brief meeting while we wait for Riordan and the rest of our troops. He waits with a hot supper in his estate."

Loghain's nodded once, and sharply, "I will join you presently."

Loren nodded at him and made her way back through the closely placed tents of the Denerim's Guard when someone stepped deliberately into her path. He was burly and red-haired – from somewhere in the south, then. Loren recognized him as one of the men who'd listened to her and Alistair's conversation. He no longer carried his mug, but his leer was mostly free of the ale blurriness that she'd seen so often at Ostagar.

"Our king is a lucky man, it seems." His voice was low, but steady.

"There are many kinds of luck, soldier." Soldier was Loghain's fallback address to whoever approached him, and Loren found it falling from her mouth without forethought. She kept her gaze steady on him.

A leer tightened in his cheeks and he used his height to look her up and down with a minimal amount of motion. "The King also seems a sensible sort of man. Practical."

"He is."

The man's hand went to the hilt of the mace that hung on his belt. Some humans, Loren noticed, kept their weapons at their waist rather than on their backs. The hilt protruded up and out from his hip and he fondled it absent mindedly. Both the armour and the mace were in worse shape than the armour she and Loghain had just persuaded the dwarf to repair. "Sensible to let you make your living where you can?"

"Pardon?" Loren was bewildered.

His leer grew more pronounced, "A campful of soldiers facing death? Not many other ways for an elf to make as much in an evening."

Loren was bareheaded here, amoung her troops, but had worn her dragonscale so that she'd be more easily recognized. She had no idea if this man simply didn't know her, but he'd clearly failed to recognize the difference in the wealth they carried on their backs. She wondered how he'd stumbled into their company. She regarded him a moment, at a loss for how to respond. His leer faded into an expression of mortified anger under her calm consideration. She heard steps behind her that she didn't recognize. She reached for her maul almost luxuriously and swung it easily from her back. Its arc came close to the redhead before her, and she paused its momentum as it came between them, parallel to the ground. She eyeballed its length, as if checking for flaws in its shaft. The man stepped back from her display of easy strength – holding the massive weapon still and straight in one hand before her. Still squinting at the weapon, she spoke again, "I'm no castle elf." She sheathed the weapon and stepped around him. The man behind her did not follow. Loren wondered how long it'd be until the elves found out about Alistair.


	14. Morrigan Has Her Way

Hi all - I am very sorry for the long delay here. I've been overwhelmed by real life for a while and haven't have the time to type anything up, even though I've been writing chapters longhand at work when I can. Here is chapter 14, which takes Loren and Alistair to the end of Origins. As a reminder - Loren sent Alistair campaigning through the Bannhorn prior to the Landsmeet, which the Wardens then won almost without effort. The (very) hardened Alistair accepted the resignation of Loghain and eventually decided that if someone was going to die in the Joining, he'd rather it was Loghain than one of his and Loren's companions. Alistair and Anora decide to gather their allies at Teagan's estate in the Bannhorn, as it's more central. Anora is Alistair's High Chancellor, but she isn't in this chapter.

I do have a post-Awakenings story about Loren, Alistair, and Anora, but I want to finish writing it before I publish anything. It's definitely got a host of problems, so no blue-sky stories from me. I'm also enjoying the greater degree of control over plot that one just doesn't get with a novelization.

Thanks for reading.

**This is Better: Compromise**

* * *

Alistair watched Morrigan click the door shut behind Loren't retreat. She turned to him and, involuntarily, he stepped backward.

"This needn't be unpleasant, Alistair."

"Will anyone be able to kill the Archdemon after this, or does it still require a Warden?"

Morrigan tsked him as she raised her shirt over her head, "Such pillow talk." Alistair promptly averted his eyes to focus on the stone wall, but not before learning that she wore as little underneath that . . . shirt as it had always seemed. He traced a long crack running diagonally through one of the wall's large square stones, but he couldn't help but imagine the glimpse of Morrigan's two pert breasts springing back from her swift motion. The wall's crack was small, not a structural problem, he thought. "But yes, the soul of the god will seek this new taint above any another. Regardless of the method of its displacement."

He moved his eyes back to her and found that the allure of a nearly naked woman in a bedroom was made less enticing by looking directly at her. "If I find out you've lied to us, I will find you and I will kill you."

Morrigan's lips pushed together in satisfaction. "Now, that's more like it. Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy templars?"

.

Loren covered the hallway's length with long purposeful strides. She had no desire to be spoken to, and let her status and her hurried bearing precede her down the hall. She passed only Teagan's open door, and she did not glance sideways to see if he were inside. She pushed the heavy oak front door aside. Outside, people moved about in purposeful hurry. Loren paused at the edge of the threshold's single stair. She could hear Loghain assigning various light tasks to the men, and she thought of the elves' fire, their chant before the fight. She had nothing to do – they'd had days to prepare. The smell of cooking was in the air. The field of her army was dotted with small campfires and the silhouettes of men moving about them. Loren smelt meat in the air and realized she had not eaten dinner. She didn't want to eat – her hunger was grinding her sharp and mean. She felt like a knife cutting the wind that parted around her in its unchecked rush along the wind break. Loren glanced again over her packed field, then stepped into the thin line of trees. Her slim form was lost amoung the winding trunks.

.

Alistair laid back on the bed and fixed his eyes on the ceiling. Loren had helped him out of his armour before she'd left, and he'd removed his own gambeson before crossing the room to the bed. He'd left his smalls on, and he could feel himself shrinking inside them. He thought of the light in Loren's tent, filtered by canvas, colouring the space in an easy, golden glow. He turned his head to the single candle in the room, watched the small drip of wax harden as it descended. He heard the shuffle of Morrigan disrobing.

.

It was quieter in the trees, but Loren could still hear the voices and movement of her troops. Still, she felt freer knowing that she could not been seen. The current of the wind was not a far-off ripple over the tree tops, as it had been in the Brecillian forest, but swept through the branches, rustling the new leaves all around her. The buds had been early and fast. She remembered the spring of Ostagar – it had been only made its final transition to full summer while she'd been unconscious, deep in the Wilds. She remembered Morrigan casting her spell to cover their dash out of the Wilds and the mage's snide comments at Alistair's grief. She'd have known even then, Loren thought, how this was going to end. She believed, even if Alistair did not, that Riordan was too old a Warden and Loghain too new. Briefly, she had an image of Alistair's mouth on Morrigan's mouth, not in the fierce intensity of orgasm, but in the sweetness of the play that comes first: the release of the day into one another and the soft cling of lips to lips; the deliberate slide of tongue on tongue. Alistair often crouched forward to lay his forehead against hers when they stood face to face in moments of rare privacy. She hunched forward, shielding her heart with her shoulders and the slumping posture of a much older woman.

.

Morrigan leaned toward the candle, letting her naked breasts and her small, dark nipples hang loose in the air. She pursed her lips with deliberate slowness, knowing that Alistair was paying more attention than he'd admit. She knew she had fantastic breasts. More often than not, in the cold of her own tent, she imagined their curves as she rubbed herself in her own wetness. The pleasure of her own beauty had not betrayed her even when she realized that Flemeth had chosen her for that, too. She paused and turned her face again at Alistair, laying on the bed and breathing shallow breathes. Better he should see her, know who he was working for. One corner of her mouth curved in the soft light of the candle. Alistair pressed himself into the bed.

.

In Loren's Clan, when bonded pairs spend nights apart, the solitary partner sometimes went on retreat for the time it took. Loren had taken many retreats; they were a Dalish custom that, she suddenly realized, she'd missed intensely. She missed the way the silence deepened into her thoughts and the increasing clarity of mind's voice in that new silence. It was a good custom, and she moved deeper into the thin timber carefully. It was always patience which called the gods' attention, and Loren longed for them.

.

Morrigan hooked the smallest of her fingers under the think band that ran over Alistair's hip. She let the heat that stayed just under her skin – it crackled with power through the very flesh that made her up – push its way past the limits of her body. There was a slight scent of burning, and the band broke. Morrigan did not quite dismiss the flames rippling between her fingers and laid her hand on Alistair's newly naked thigh. It was tight with tension and athleticism and the lean days early in their journey. He moved away, almost imperceptibly, and Morrigan let the magic spread out of her into his skin and she grabbed him. He hissed and she felt her magic getting pulled into the pit of his templar training. It tugged away from her and she smiled, feeling her power rise to the occasion.

.

These trees were no forest. The bodies of the older trees had been taken away, probably for fuel, and the ground was strangely clear. There was no depth to its silence. Loren heard voices behind her, and the wind brushing through the trees. She moved forward and the windbreak ended quite suddenly, in a field slightly lower and wetter than the one they were camped in. It was covered in rough fallow and in the moonlight, Loren could not tell how much of it was growing back. The trees were fine, so it was unlikely that this land was Blighted. She stepped from the trees into the snow-crushed grasses, thaw-soft under her scale boots.

.

Alistair quelled the urge to suck all the mage's power into him. The mass of her strength pressed on the small crack he hadn't noticed himself opening. Morrigan flooded into him like a neverending rush of water through a split in wineskin.

"So hungry," Morrigan purred as she shifted her weight over him, one hot hand on either thigh. His skin pulled at her heat and she ran her flat hands up to his waist. Her mouth was above his groin and she saw him start to harden for her. His sac was smaller and tighter than the last man she'd had, back in the Wilds before the Blight. He'd been a templar too, and Morrigan had been able to hear Flemeth muttering to herself outside the hut, had known that Flemeth would know if the deed had not been done: _There is only power, and those too weak to use it_. Morrigan remembered the flash of understanding in Loren's eyes, knew that the elf had known who she was even before tonight. She passed by the mostly slack penis, wished she'd blown out the candle.

.

Small ponds lay scattered over the field. Loren had seen the still outline of a pheasant cowering by a weedy bush, but she did not move close enough to scare it away. She had no inclination to hunt tonight. Exigency. The Fereldan word came almost of its own accord: exigency. She could not remember learning it and she cracked the hard consonants in her mind's ear. She could not think, immediately, of the Dalish equivalent, and the fact that a Fereldan word appeared for her, in this moment of breaking, cheered her. Hunting carried no exigency for her tonight. The exigency of the Blight drove her actions. She repeated it again and again, a thumbstone for her mind. The word lost its meaning in repetition.

.

Morrigan's knees on were either side of Alistair's thin muscled waist, hands on either side of his head, she leaned forward. The fringe of her hair angled forward to the face beneath hers. He turned his head away, "Must we?"

"Indeed not. It can be as perfunctory as you wish." He did not respond and she shifted back, her knees still splayed open as she rested her buttocks on her heels. Her genitals were wide before him and she felt the vague tinge of templar panic that she knew so well. She set her jaw and moved a hand to herself, settling a familiar finger along the length of her opening. Best not to rush these things. She always took longer if she rushed. She moved her finger slightly upward. Slightly downward. She did not take her gaze from the Warden's face. She needed some piece of his participation. Any small piece would do.

.

There was a Dalish word for the same thing, for a necessity that drove compromises. Loren moved past the pheasant and felt a slight drop in the land. There was a creek, or even a ravine nearby. Loren turned her feet towards the decline and left her weight fall forward, to the balls of her feet. Ashalle had gone on retreat when her man had had to claim a night with another woman. Ashalle had taken her daughter – Loren was still apprenticing as a hunter and could not have gone – and the two had come back with a glow in their faces and a lightness to their steps. Ashalle had taken her man in her arms, happy to be back, to have him as he was. At the moment of losing him, she realized she didn't need him. In Dalish, the word could also mean gift; not a gift you gave, but a gift you could only get.

.

Alistair had no wish to watch Morrigan finger herself. He closed his eyes and reached down to prepare himself. He was embarrassed at his own hardness and the relief he felt at his hand's pressure. He pulled the skin upward, over the fleshy ridge of his head. He rolled it back down, the familiar pleasure pulling him away from the moment. Perhaps he could just do this until the very last moment, when he knew he wouldn't care as much.

"Alistair," Morrigan muttered in a small voice, full of longing and repressed hope. His eyes snapped open in surprise to see a bemused, triumphant expression completely at odds with the murmur she'd just uttered. "Don't stop," she said, again in that voice that made it seem like she had been hoping this, not just the act of it, but the partner she was doing it with. His anger spiked and he felt something sharp stab into him. He squirmed in alarm, only to find that the stab was somewhere inside him, not something he could move himself away from. The flash of alarm widened its point, and Morrigan smiled exultantly. He stopped the motion of his hand on his erection and pulled his fist toward his belly. "Don't stop," she said again, but this time it was an order. Every instinct he had warned him to stop, but he shoved aside his better judgement with all the sensation of ripping a tunic in two. The burn of his anger and resentment fed the point and he felt the prick of Morrigan's new magic widen in him, splitting him open.

.

The two tongues that wagged over Fereldan, that each had found a space in Loren's mouth, had pressed towards this one place to do what must be done. She heard water moving before she reached the edge of a shallow gorge. In the moonlight, it looked like a scar, lit by the high-hung moon. Winter-bare bushes tangled over the steep side, and Loren recognized the sticks of thin-thorned berries and flowering lilacs amoung them. There was a lean creek moving fast. Wade's armour felt light on her back and the leather on Chasind maul she'd been carrying for a year was heavier with dew. Her elven bones held her upright, and her Warden blood rushed along. It took the best of Fereldan to make her as she stood there, and she knew she held Fereldan's fate in her hand. She would keep it as it was and she'd stay to enjoy it.

.

Morrigan felt herself flood with excitement. It was not a sexual excitement, nor even the smug satisfaction of her own pleasure; she could feel Alistair's taint opening up to her, could feel the song siphoning into her own blood, lighting it golden, and pooling in her belly. She heard, distantly, the echoing power of the archdemon and could feel Alistair's taint straining back to it. She smiled and arched her back; she wanted this.

Freed from her gaze, Alistair couldn't help but watch the stretch of her torso, the breasts that had always been so easy to imagine. His hand moved on himself and he was relieved to find that he had reached that point where the only thing that mattered was the orgasm that was rushing towards him. He stared at the curves of her breasts, and he could feel his blood stretching open, becoming thinner. It was not a sexual pleasure, but it feed the beat of his hand, goading him faster. He reached his free hand to her waist. Her skin was hot and pale in the candlelight. He gripped her, his thumb pressing into the strong muscles of her core. Morrigan rolled her face forwards – her expression was full of a grim glee and she seemed far away. "Morrigan," he said, warning that he was close. Her eyes took a moment to focus on him, and when they did, she just raised an eyebrow in amusement. "Morrigan!" he said, again and more urgently. She moved, but slowly, so slowly that he was already coming by the time she closed around him. He came and came, a deep emptying.

* * *

Morrigan had not bothered replacing her narrow breast band, but was holding it, balled, in her hand, when she turned back to the bed where Alistair was still laying. As soon as Morrigan had raised her body off the bed, he had take the edge of the quilt and rolled himself into it and away from her. He could feel the stick of their combined juices on his slack penis, felt it drying in the folds, but did nothing about it. He would have time after she'd left. "You have only yourself to blame for tonight's unpleasantness," she oiled from the corner. Alistair grunted in response. Morrigan stood still by the door. Alistair pushed his head a little further out of the thick winter blanket to peer at her suspiciously.

"Something else you want?" he said, not bothering to hide any of the ill will that had suddenly spiked in the last hour.

Morrigan hesitated, "Just – thank you." And she was gone.

Alistair had never been so relieved to be in a room alone before and tucked his head more deeply into the blankets. Soon, he told himself, he'd get up and wipe himself off. He knew he'd feel better if he did. He was as cold and sore as if Loren had kept him on rotation for weeks on end. His neck and knees and back felt tight enough to snap and he wondered idly if he'd be fit to march the next day. He curled his limbs closer to the warmth of his torso and shivered in the fireless room.

Some time later, the door creaked open. Alistair was lost in the descending cloud of sleep and was as aware of the approach as he would be if he were sinking into a nightmare. He knew it was a bad thing, but he still welcomed it, wanted it to come and take him.

"Alistair?" It was Loren and he shifted slightly in the blankets and grunted at her, too far asleep to speak. Distantly, he was aware that her voice had taken on a softness he'd never heard from her before. "Wake up and get up." He grunted again, and it seemed that it really was the perfect response for every circumstance. He wondered if he could rule Fereldan by grunts alone. He saw Anora listening patiently to the variations in pitch and length. Something slipped between the bed and his quilt; he jumped, clutching the blanket against nakedness.

Loren was there, holding her empty hands out to him.

"Oh," he said, and pressed his wrists to his eye sockets. He closed his palms over his head and tried to will the sleepiness away. It started to fade and he shook his head, inhaling.

"I brought you a hot rock," she said, gesturing to a bundle of rags left bare near the bed's foot.

"Thanks," he said. "I was cold."

"Castles," she said, a slight glow of amusement in her voice. Alistair had never before wanted her to be farther away from him, but at this moment, he wanted her far gone. He picked up the trailing edge of the blanket and pulled it tight around his bare back. Loren turned her face slightly before she spoke again, plainly and without the one-sided bridge of her humour, "I brought you something else, too, if you'll let me."

"What?" he asked.

"Take off your blanket," she said. "If you want."

Alistair watched her turn from him and pick up a large basin from beside the door Morrigan had walked though, however long ago. The room had no fireplace, but there was a thick steam rising off the water's surface and a waterlogged rag floating on it. Loren moved the basin closer to the center of the room. The steam smelled vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it. It was softly herbal, and its unobtrusiveness seemed to open a space before him. Loren knelt, took the rag from the basin, and squeezed it damp. She looked up at him. "It'll make you feel better. Trust me." His throat thickened and he nodded. "Step in."

He folded the quilt roughly in half, tossed it over the hot rock, and stepped into the basin facing away from Loren. The water was warm and came to his ankles. His submerged feet seemed to swell in relief. Loren took the cloth and ran the water from the back of his knee to the top of the water. Warmed, the damp skin seemed somehow newer as well, and Alistair closed his eyes while Loren did the other leg. By the time she'd rinsed all around his legs and was starting his lower back, he realized that a slow tingle had sunk through to the muscles she'd rinsed.

"What is this?" he asked her.

He did not follow the elven syllables of her answer. "It will relax your body," she finished in Fereldan. Alistair realized that he couldn't feel the previously tight tendons of his lower legs, that they'd seemed to melt into the basin and were somehow part of it now. The rag passed wetly over the tension of his back, and as Loren dipped the cloth again in the water, the whole core of him settled, and as it did, a grief came from some dark recess of his heart, flooding him. He did not cry or move, just let the grief rattle inside the warm hollow of his body. Water trickled out of the cloth and he heard each splash and drop as if it were falling in his ear. The fabric was rough, swept the hairs of his lower back uniformly left. Moisture beaded along them, dropped to the hair below. Each drop was a great thundering shudder in the chasm that had opened like a split in the earth.

"It's a mild sedative," he heard Loren say, from very far away. "It enters through the skin."

He thought he might have moaned, but wasn't sure if the sound had moved past his clenched jaw. Loren was moving around him now, passing the cloth over his forehead. His back was damp from the hairline to the ankles, and he remembered her moving over him, but hadn't noticed when she had. A drop fell onto his closed eye and he felt her fingertip brush it off him. Her touch was the break of sun in a storm and he opened his eyes. She was smiling at him, and he was more himself, more in the world. His hands closed over her wrists. They were wet.

"Let me finish, love," she said. "I'm almost done."

"What is this?" he asked again.

She seemed to understand the differing drive behind the question and cocked her head again as she answered, "It's what we do when one of our women are forced." There was an odd expression on her face, and he tried to see her through his haze. There was no pity and no anger, just compassion. He let her hands go and she bent back to the basin. "You'll feel better in the morning."


End file.
